The RHA Gallery presents a new body of work by Cork-based sculptor Alex Pentek, titled Folded Space. This site-specific series of artworks, which has been created for the foyer and atrium of the RHA is inspired by Pentek’s long-time interest in origami. Origami informs his work on a practical and philosophical level, as well as an ongoing interest in science and cosmology.
Origami is at the forefront of research into deploy-able forms for use in space exploration, such as the Miura fold. Named after Japanese astrophysicist Koryo Miura, he developed this design to allow astro solar sails to be compactly stored and unfold once in space. On a larger scale origami is now being used as a model to explain Galaxy formation [White & Vogelsberger, 2009, Neyrinck, 2012].
Varying from large scale folded surfaces to small scale more intimate folded works in paper and steel each work is a form of active structure; where the overall form and texture is informed by the complex interaction of many interconnected folded surfaces. As some of the works twist through space they become endless Mobius surfaces, the physicist’s anomaly; a surface that exists in three-dimensional space but only has two dimensions and has the mathematical property of being multi-directional.
ARTIST IN CONVERSATION: Alex Pentek with RHA curator, Victoria Evans
3pm, Friday 9 February
RHA Friends Room
This talk will unpack Alex Pentek’s exhibition Folded Space, a site-specific work that has been created for the gallery’s foyer and atrium spaces. Together with RHA curator, Victoria Evans he will discuss the process of making this work and responding to the site of the RHA, as well as discussing his wider practice, which encompasses site-specific and public artworks in a range of materials.
Image: Alex Pentek, Otherness, 2007, Single folded sheet of paper, Another Place, Salamanca Art Center, Hobart, Tasmania, Australia, Image Craig Opie.
