Galleri Urbane is pleased to announce a solo exhibition of the latest work by Gail Peter Borden entitled Figured Frames.
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Get a closer look at Figured Frames on video
The forms that Borden creates—epitomes of an exquisitely precise synergy between material, color, and proportion—invite viewers to perceive two- and three-dimensional structures anew. Playful and rigorous, they harness aspects of architecture but ultimately transcend its circumscribed sets of questions and answers. In this recent series, Borden reveals a new approach. In its scope, Figured Frames introduces novel terrain. Read the artist’s words like a poem. Like a how-to. A haiku. A manifesto. An ode to spatial relationships:
“The explicit use of the panel as an object with depth from the wall surface engages the space it occupies. The form joins the wall upon which it resides allowing the composition to engage the surface of the architecture establishing a new boundary and composition. The three dimensionality of the piece emerges in its presence and interaction.
Once this relationship is established, the orthogonal rectilinear boundary is no longer limiting. The figured form emerges. Derived from an extension of the composition, the perimeter form is derived from within but engaged through its contrast with it white surface plane of occupation.”
Exhibition Install Images:
The first presence is established.
Color fields composed of shapes with hard juxtaposing edges. Their combinations through dominant and recessive relationships allow the implications of perceptive space.
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Gail checks in from his Houston studio to answer some question about Figured Frames
A second presence is established.
The reflective surface establishes a plane of engagement. Capturing an animated surface that mimics the context and its events, light, movement and density, the finish creates a homogenizing but dulled reflection of its environment.
‘A third presence is established.
Only through time, movement, perception and contet can the piece be understood as a quite participant in its understanding. The object provides a dialogue by revealing that which is already there.'
Gail Peter Borden received Bachelor of Arts degrees (all cum laude) in fine arts, art history, and architecture from Rice University as well as a Masters of Architecture with distinction from Harvard University’s Graduate School of Design. Borden is the Director of Graduate Studies and a tenured professor at the Gerald D. Hines College of Architecture and Design at the University of Houston and principal of Borden Partnership since 2002. 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 seven 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), and City of Refugees, 2020 (AR+D). A new monographic catalogue, Concrete Abstraction, accompanies this exhibition.