EXHIBIT

Gail Peter Borden

Figured Frames: Specific Objects and Open Space

As Borden’s second solo show in Houston, Figured Frames: Specific Objects and Open Space features 22 resin panels engaging perspectival space and the composition of the wall through figured forms.

“Thus we cover the universe with drawings we have lived”
– The Poetics of Space  Gaston Bachelard

In 1969, as part of an experimental program at LACMA, Robert Irwin and James Turrell outlined a new direction for art, identifying viewer experience as the critical outcome of an artist's creative production and establishing viewers' visual perception of the environment as a principal concern. Light was the primary medium for investigating these ideas. My work offers that material perception has the same or even greater potential. Engaging the perception of space through the associated systems of constructed matter [as defined by the relationship of material and a process of working with that material] generates systemic form in relationship to the body.

We experience our place in the world through visual perception. The process of interpretation through our cultural and emotive context determines our understanding of our environment. Space is something we exist in everyday but rarely recognize. As the absence between presence, it is what we move through and what establishes the positional interrelations of objects. It is mediated by light and color through the perceptive capabilities of the body. Space is present but not real. It can be made, constructed, organized, and mediated.

My work is about engaging space, creating space, capturing space, and perceiving space as a visual and cognitive act. As reductive systemic objects using distinct material processes, the goal of my paintings is to find quiet spatial moments that engage through a perceptive experience. They facilitate the production of space through representational tools using projective geometries, color, reflection, and perceived depth of “shallow spaces.” These mechanisms facilitate an understanding of how the mechanics of the body with its inherent constraints and limitations create an emotive experience. This sensorial action is the moment of inter-relationship and understanding.

Links to artists' websites and/or social media:

http://www.bordenpartnership.com

http://www.galleriurbane.com/gail-peter-borden

http://www.instagram.com/gpborden

Bio:

Gail Peter Borden FAIA attended Rice University, simultaneously receiving Bachelor of Arts degrees (all cum laude) in fine arts, art history, and architecture. He went on to Harvard University’s Graduate School of Design to complete a post-professional Master of Architecture with distinction. Borden is the Director of Graduate Studies in addition to holding a tenured position as a professor at the Gerald D. Hines College of Architecture and Design at the University of Houston and principal of Borden Partnership. His artwork is an integral component of a vibrant research-based practice. His projects are dedicated to craft across a variety of scales and media. From books, to installations, furniture to paintings and exhibitions, his work continues to act as proof that art has the power to transform the everyday. Borden received artist-in-residence awards from the Chinati Foundation in Marfa, Texas; the Atlantic Center for the Arts; the Borchard Fellowship; and the MacDowell Colony. Borden  has published 7 books on materiality: Material Precedent: The Typology of Modern Tectonics, 2010 (Wiley Press); Matter: Material Processes in Architectural Production, 2011 (Routledge); Principia: Architectural Principles of Material Form, 2013 (Pearson); Process: Material and Representation in Architecture, 2014 (Routledge); Lineament: Material, Representation and the Physical Figure in Architecture, 2017 (Routledge); New Essentialism: Material Architecture, 2018 (AR+D), City of Refugees, 2020 (AR+D) and Assembly_: Matter, Lineament and Aggregated Systems in Architectural Production_ all focus on materiality. As an architect designer, artist, theoretician, and practitioner, Professor Borden’s research and practice focuses on the role of materiality and architecture in contemporary culture.