Un-Folding Realities. 2022.
Performing Research, Solstice Arts Centre.
Part of our MFA studies in Art in the Contemporary World, NCAD, was a ‘making public’ module. With fellow students Nadia Armstrong, Leila Anglade and Belinda Quirk, we exhibited our research plans together in an exhibition at the Solstice Arts Centre titled Performing Research. Un-folding Realities is an installation of a video performance lecture, a table of artefacts and a new work titled Meta-Chair.
Meta-Chair. 2022
Un-Folding Realities. Alex Pentek. 2022.
This short performance lecture explains the fold as an ontology, or a site of transformation between ‘being’ and the ‘field’ from which it both arises and enfolds within itself. Drawing on ‘The Origami of Being’ and the writing of Levi Bryant, and also material led artistic research in Design Thinking and Robotics, I introduce these ideas through a visual vocabulary of folds to allow us look both on and beyond the surface of things. A more in-depth description can be seen here: Alex Pentek. Un-folding Realities. 2022
Big thanks to Claire Murphy for her filming and editing, Chris Hurley of Cork Film Services for lighting equipment, the National Sculpture Factory, where the work was filmed and Belinda Quirk and her marvellous team at Solstice Arts Centre!
Carnivore. (In collaboration with Luke Murphy & Attic Projects).
2019 – I created a series of origami inspired sculptural elements in collaboration with award winning Choreographer and dance performance artist Luke Murphy for his new performance Carnivore.
It was worth every fold collaborating with Luke and working with the talented Carnivore team Carlye Eckert, Eric Jackson Bradley and Julie Koenig, who completely re interpreted these forms by their movements. The large paper tunnel transforms from a dome and is revisited often during the performance. Seeing this main architectural element as a sort of spiritual home for the performance, I titled this large piece Duomo from the Italian word meaning church.
This showed at the following dates and venues:
Uillinn, West Cork Arts Centre. 24th /25th May, 2019 Visual, Centre for Contemporary Art, Carlow Arts Festival. 7/10 June 2019. Crawford Gallery, Cork Midsummer Festival. 17/18 June 2019 CIACLA, Los Angeles. 15/17 July 2019
Here are some stills from the performance itself which was incredible! More about Luke Murphy and Attic Projects can be seen here: https://www.atticprojects.com/
Cork Midsummer Festival 2019 // Photograph by Jed Niezgoda
Luke Murphy, Carnivore, Crawford Gallery, Cork. http://www.jedniezgoda.com
Cork Midsummer Festival 2019 // Photograph by Jed Niezgoda
Luke Murphy, Carnivore, Crawford Gallery, Cork. http://www.jedniezgoda.com
Cork Midsummer Festival 2019 // Photograph by Jed Niezgoda
Luke Murphy, Carnivore, Crawford Gallery, Cork. http://www.jedniezgoda.com
Cork Midsummer Festival 2019 // Photograph by Jed Niezgoda
Luke Murphy, Carnivore, Crawford Gallery, Cork. http://www.jedniezgoda.com
Implicate & Explicate Order.
Uillinn, West Cork Arts Centre, 24th May – 8th June 2019.
2019 – Ann Davoren, Director of Uillinn: West Cork Arts Centre, invited me to create a solo exhibition. This body of new work evolved from a number of previous forms and ideas I have been exploring; in particular ideas of connetectedness and how this physically manifests.
Implicate & Explicate Order explores physicist David Bohm’s idea that the seemingly separate phenomena we observe (explicate) are connected in hidden ways (implicate). His sketch of a gold fish being observed from different view points illustrates this idea:
Implicate & Explicate Order
Implicate & Explicate Order explores this idea by contrasting regular fold patterns with disrupted areas and by contrasting forms folded from identically creased sheets of paper.
Huge thanks to Professor Fiona Kearney, Director, The Glucksman, University College Cork for so eloquently distilling these ideas in the catalog text which can be read here:
Diptych Implicate and Explicate (left) and Implicate & Explicate Order (right). Upstairs Gallery, Uillinn: West Cork Arts Centre. Folded paper and fabricated steel.
Implicate & Explicate Order. (Image Shane O’Driscoll).
Implicate & Explicate Order. (Image Shane O’Driscoll).
Implicate & Explicate Order. Detail. (Image Shane O’Driscoll).
Implicate & Explicate Order. Detail. (Image Shane O’Driscoll).
Implicate. Diptych. (Image Shane O’Driscoll).
Explicate. Diptych. Folded paper and fabricated steel.
EARTH, WIND & FIRE: Made in Cork Contemporary
23 November 2018–
17 February 2019
I was invited to create new work for this exhibition by Curator Anne Boddaert. Unfolding Space is a development of ideas that takes inspiration from rigid origami unfolding surfaces that are currently being used to research areas as diverse as micro medical devices, robotics and spiral galaxy formation. This is a durational work with new works being added to the space over the duration of the exhibition.
Alex Pentek. Unfolding Space # 1 . 2018. No. 3 X 8 X 1.5 m folded cartridge paper. Earth Wind & Fire: Made in Cork Contemporary. Crawford Gallery, Cork, Ireland. (Image Michael MacSweeney)
Unfolding Space #2 & 1 (left to right. Images Alex Pentek).
Unfolding Space #2.
Unfolding Space #2
Unfolding Space # 2 (detail).
Unfolding Space #3 (right).
Unfolding Space #3 (left)
The two smaller works are from identically folded and sized sheets of paper, with an emphasis on folding the poles to create the spherical form of Unfolding Space #2 and an emphasis on folding the equator to create the reversed sphere form in Unfolding Space #3. Though each one of this pair appears to be different, made from identical components they each contain all the information of the other opposite work, suggesting connections between the hidden and the obvious or an implicate and explicate order.
With support from Arup
© 2018 www.crawfordartgallery.ie
Folded Space: RHA 2018
Curator Victoria Evans invited me to create and exhibit a new paper installation for the Royal Hibernian Academy (RHA), Ely Place, Dublin, Ireland which opened on 19th January 2018. This ran until April 2018, alongside gallery exhibitions by Grayson Perry, Elizabeth Magill, Niall de Buitléar and a selection of Irish/American landscapes.
Irish film maker Paddy Cahill created the following short film of the work which can be seen on the following link; Folded Space RHA 2018
I look forward to hopefully collaborating with Paddy later this year…
Alex Pentek. Folded Space. 2018.Folded paper 9 x 1.5 m. RHA Gallery, Ely Place, Dublin, Ireland. (Image Victoria Evans).
Alex Pentek. Folded Space. (Detail). 2018.Folded paper 9 x 1.5 m. RHA Gallery, Ely Place, Dublin, Ireland. (Image Victoria Evans).
A short film clip of this sculpture created by Paddy Cahill can be seen on the link below:
The following is a selection of works exhibited in Ireland and Australia.
Alex Pentek. The Intimacy of Distance. 2011. Folded Paper 10 x 1.5 m. Gravity, Crawford Gallery, Cork, Ireland. (image Daragh McGrath).
The Intimacy of Distance. (Detail).
‘Otherness’. (single folded sheet of paper). 2007. Salamanca Arts Centre, Hobart, Tasmania, Australia.
Otherness. folded paper. 2007. (images Craig Opie).
Otherness (Detail). 2007. image Craig Opie.
Alex Pentek. Stellated dodecahedron. 2014 ( single folded paper sheet). 16x16x16cm. Rudolf Heltzel Design, Kilkenny Arts Festival, Kilkenny City, Ireland.
Alex Pentek. Klein Surface. 2014. (single folded paper sheet). 30x25x20cm. Rudolf Heltzel Design, Kilkenny Arts Week, Kilkenny City, Ireland.
Alex Pentek. Water Bomb Vessel. 2014. (single folded paper sheet). 30x20x20cm. Rudolf Heltzel Design, Kilkenny Arts Week, Kilkenny City, Ireland.
Alex Pentek. Stellated Icosahedron. 2014. (single folded paper sheet). 16x16x16cm. Rudolf Heltzel Design, Kilkenny Arts Week, Kilkenny City, Ireland.
(A diagram of the crease pattern & instructions for this sculpture can be found under the Studio heading).
Alex Pentek. Spheroid. 2014. (single folded paper sheet). 16x16x16cm. Rudolf Heltzel Design, Kilkenny Arts Week, Kilkenny City, Ireland.
Alex Pentek. Transcending Column (Detail). 2014. Single folded sheet of paper. H. 4m. MART Gallery, Rathmines, Dublin, Ireland.
Cellular Automata. 2005. (Folded from single paper sheet). C2, Crawford Gallery, Cork, Ireland. (Image Stuart Coughlan).
Alex Pentek – Cellular Automata. 2005. (Image Stuart Coughlan).