Dead Hotel. Ellis makes two and three-dimensional works in which he appropriates simple objects such as garden chairs, scale model kits and lunch boxes. Household items become complex representations of vast architectural structures, hovering somewhere between the architect's model and the virtual world of computer animation.
Dead Hotel
5 September - 10 October 2003
Percy Miller gallery is pleased to present their first major solo exhibition of work by Tom Ellis. Ellis makes two and three-dimensional works in which he appropriates simple objects such as garden chairs, scale model kits and lunch boxes. Household items become complex representations of vast architectural structures, hovering somewhere between the architect's model and the virtual world of computer animation.
The acts of upturning and inverting seem to be of more than simply passing significance for Ellis and the exhibition is unified by a formal language based upon the mechanics of visual perception. In Chimera, a work in which two plastic chairs are balanced one on top of the other, the physical process of inversion becomes the optical process of reflection and is used to turn a physical object into a purely optical event.
Ellis succeeds in moving from playful humour, with works such as Take Off, in which the scaled-down minuteness of railway set models is employed at floor level to create the sensation of soaring above the houses of an airport perimeter, to the dark and disturbing pathos of works like Dead Hotel in which a watery reflection perpetuates a mysteriously absent snow-covered hotel.
In St Catharine's Chapel two scale model subway staircases are upturned to create the architectural proposal for a contemporary chapel. Out of a collaboration with Adam Richards Architects, a series of drawings have been made purporting to be the finished plans of St. Catherinex{2019}s Chapel as a full scale building. Details ranging from window structures and door handles to roof joists and foundations have been considered for this four inch edifice.
Recent exhibitions include Georg Baselitz or Mike Kelley and Chockerfuckingblocked at Jeffrey Charles Gallery and In Your Time at Percy Miller gallery. He will be exhibiting at Martinez Gallery, New York in August 2003.
Special thanks to Adam Richards Architects, London.
Opening times: Wednesday - Friday 11am - 6pm
Saturday 11am - 3pm
Or by appointment
Image:
Dead Hotel 2002 MDF, polystyrene, glue, screws 47 x 62.5 x 51.5 cm
Percy Miller Gallery
39 Snowsfields London SE1 3SU
Tel. 020 7207 4578
Fax. 020 7207 0593