Nine Reflective Editors

Solo Exhibition. Each of my exhibitions is treated as a new ‘architectural’ work responding directly to, and transforming a particular space and each involves extensive, highly detailed research and planning. In this exhibition I responded to the environment by installing 9 Reflective Editor works. These were machine-tooled cast acrylic sheets, with a highly reflective black surface featuring a variation of grid-like apertures. Positioning within the space allowed each grouping to be read as a ‘series’ in its own right.

This exhibition enabled me to develop themes of space, reflection, geometry and repetition that have occupied me consistently. I work from within the minimalist/formalist tradition but expand the concept of sculptural space through serialism and optics. Thus the space I research is simultaneously real and imaginary; visual but not always accessible.

My Reflective works are both editors and objects: one looks through them (to the wall behind), but also at them as both a mirror and a grid and the viewer is encouraged to connect each work as a serial development of the grids themselves.

The ‘machine aesthetic’ of each work is matched by technical rigour in their installation and by a mathematical integrity of grid ratios across each series. The unique challenge in Reutlingen was how to make the work effective in such a large space without succumbing to the temptation to ‘overfill’ the space.

Douglas Allsop

Research Interests

Minimalism. Conceptual Art. Konkrete Kunst

Current Research

1. My practice is concerned with the nature of perception and of illusion, ways of seeing i.e. what we want to see, why we see what we see, what we don't see, what sees us, etc. I have written: Of what we look at
Of what looks at us
Of what looking blinds us to

2. Work in the studio is a drawing/design/photography based activity which includes small scale maquette or model making.

Each of my exhibitions is treated as a new 'architectural' work responding directly to, and transforming a particular space and each involves extensive, highly detailed research and planning. The notes and exhibition plan is always retained by me in the form of a research portfolio. I work from within the minimalist/formalist tradition but expand the concept of sculptural space through serialism and optics. Thus the space I research is simultaneously real and imaginary; visual but not always accessible. My Reflective works are both editors and objects: one looks through them (to the wall behind), but also at them as both a mirror and a grid and the viewer is encouraged to connect each work as a serial development of the grids themselves.

The 'machine aesthetic' of each work is matched by technical rigour in their installation and by a mathematical integrity of grid ratios across each series.

• http://www.stiftungkonkretekunst.org