Untitled (Space Model No. 2)
2 -Way mirror, glass and plywood
86 x 64.5 x 64.6
2002
Green On Red Gallery is delighted to announce its fourth solo exhibition of Corban Walker¹s work and a return to the artist¹s trademark large-scale installation work. The exhibition consists of one large site-specific 10.4m x 4m x .13m installation made with glass, two-way mirror and wood plus free-standing mixed media sculptures and new photographs.
The overwhelming scale and the effect on the gallery space is sure to make this exhibition at least as spectacular as his Mapping 4 installation at Pace Wildenstein Gallery, New York, in September 2000, if not more so. It is when Walker is working at this scale and working with the fabric and physical limits of the architecture he occupies that he is at his best. This was true of the above-mentioned exhibition in New York, of his first exhibition in the Green On Red Gallery in Fitzwilliam Square in 1995 with Ocular Field and Ocular Field II in Le Confort Moderne, Poitiers and will be true, surely, of his permanent installation for Mitsubishi, Tokyo, later this year.
The smaller, freestanding sculptures in the exhibition have something also of the ambiguous, disorienting quality of his architecturally-engaged work. They act like models for potential installations and ideal spaces. They are intriguing, seductive objects in themselves but don¹t reveal a tangible, definable sense of scale. The interplay of reflective and transparent mirrored and see-through surfaces placed at a low height corresponding to the scale of the " Corban Rule " is hard to tie down. They appear as models but also draw the viewer into an exploration of their intimate clean constantly changing chambers and avenue-like spaces.
Furthermore, there is a relationship between these works and the photographic works on display. Walker shows here his keen eye for composition and dramatic use of colour plucked from the everyday environment but exquisitely rendered. The extreme cropping and oblique views of elevation details distort and abstract the original. Walker¹s work, even in these photographic compositions, constantly evade our firm grasp and slip away, ultimately, into the indescribable and intangible.
Walker has recently completed Blip, a commission for the South Dublin County Council, outside the Civic Centre, Clondalkin. This piece is a first cousin of a similar work on the rooftop of No. 1 Castle St. D. 2 best seen on the approach on Werburgh St. coming from St. Patrick¹s Park. He will complete his installation for the Mitsubishi Estate, Tokyo later this year. He has also been invited to install a site-specific work for Artcore Gallery, Toronto in 2003.