Simon Ingram
Boing Boom Tschak
3 - 25 February 2009
Artist's Talk: Thursday 5 February, 6.30pm at Gow Langsford Gallery
Fresh from his participation in MINUS SPACE at P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center / MoMA , which was described by Jerry Saltz in New York magazine ¹ as one the best group exhibitions in NYC’s 2008 season, Simon Ingram presents new work at Gow Langsford Gallery.
¹ Saltz, J. "The Top Nine Shows (and One Event)." New York Magazine. Dec 7, 2008
In Boing Boom Tschak, Simon Ingram draws together two parallel lines of inquiry, the resulting works exhibit an intriguing painterly dialogue. The exhibition includes paintings that the artist has created by hand according to simple sets of machine like rules i.e. the ‘artist as machine’. Juxtaposed alongside these are self-making painting machines, developed and constructed by Ingram i.e. the ‘machine as artist’. Both procedures generate exquisite painterly monochromatic compositions, whether machine or man-made. The focus is on a dialogue of mechanistic and automatic practices embedded in the gritty material fact of painting. Though the works have roots in Concrete Art and Abstraction, they open up a conversation with artificial life and the idea that matter, the matter of painting, develops its own vocabularies of thought and self-organisation. Ingram’s work also draws on the history of the machine in art as an apparatus of autonomous creativity and in so doing calls into question the traditional assumption of the artist as creative genius. In Boing, Boom, Tschak, Ingram does so with vigour, subtle irony and compassion.
Simon Ingram's work interprets the modernist practice of the autonomous, self-made artwork in relation to painting as a constructional and computationally based self-organising system. His practice articulates itself in three distinct lines of work: machines made from Lego robotics and generic constructional materials that paint autonomously in oil paint with a brush; paintings made by the artist that use artificial life systems as a method to govern composition and decision making; and video work related to the production of self-making painting machines. Drawing on divergent strands of knowledge (artificial life, painting, critical theory, software), the project re-stages and reinvents painting as a critical, contemporary project that explores painting’s conceptual signification while remaining resolutely fabricational.
Simon Ingram (b.1971) was born in Wellington. He is currently a Senior Lecturer at the Elam School of Fine Art and holds a doctorate from The University of Auckland (2006). Ingram has exhibited locally and internationally for over ten years. In 2009 his work features in three exhibitions: "Boing Boom Tschak" at Gow Langsford Gallery, Auckland; "Drunken Walk in Brussels" at CCNOA, Brussels and “The Function of the Studio” at Stedefreund, Berlin. In 2008 his work featured in six local and international exhibitions: "Minus Space" at P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center/MoMA, Long Island City, New York; "Yo Yo Modernism" at CCNOA, Center for Contemporary Non-objective art, Brussels; "My Eyes Keep me in Trouble" at The Physics Room, Christchurch; "200 KünstlerInnen aus 18 Ländern" at Gesellschaft für Kunst, Bonn; "Drawing for an autopoietical painting -- Monochrome in C (2005) with Monochrome in K" at A Centre for Art, Auckland; "Julian Dashper - 1994, 2001, 2008, Simon Ingram - 1996, 2002, 2008, Salvatore Panatteri - 1998, 2003, 2008" at Newcall Gallery, Auckland. In 2007 his work featured in four public gallery exhibitions in New Zealand: "Just Painting" at Auckland Art Gallery, Auckland; "Four Times Painting" at Victoria University of Wellington’s Adam Art Gallery, Wellington; "The Secret Life of Paint" at Dunedin Public Art Gallery; "PX: A Purposeless Production/A Necessary Praxis" at Auckland University of Technology’s St Paul Street Gallery, Auckland. Simon Ingram is represented in Auckland by Gow Langsford Gallery. His work is held in key New Zealand collections such as those of Jenny Gibbs, Glenn Schaeffer and the Chartwell and Fletcher Trusts. Over the last few years of his career he has received awards including a University of Auckland Best Doctoral Thesis Award, a Francis Hodgkins Fellowship and a Creative New Zealand New Work Grant.
The artist would like to acknowledge the support of The University of Auckland and Precision Laser Cutting