Looking directly ahead, there is a shape and a pattern to this one viewpoint at this particular moment in time. Move to the side and the space, the shape and the pattern changes, just as they do in real life. Is this a flat hologram? No; its more subtle than that – it’s a three dimensional sculpture hidden within the physical shape of a flat surface on the wall.
Jonathan Zawada (born Perth, Australia 1981) is an artist and designer who integrates many disciplines into his art and graphic work. His exhibition “A Particular Turbulant Wave” at BEERS London at the heart of Tech City around Old Street incorporates his interest in computer coding, human perception and the complexity of space and time, where something can be both one point in time and space and at the same time part of a much larger continuum.
At the end of the gallery, the painting “Solid State” initially appears to be an anomaly, being the only work in canvas and with a more traditional appearance than the other works, but it sets a context for the other work. The foreground of the painting is heaving and moving; the green tints suggest that it might be sand, but it could well be waves. The two dimensional painting creates a three dimensional image where immense natural forces are captured within an instant snapshot of time.
The wall sculptures are coloured metal mesh boxes containing unseen layers of acrylic, in the same way as data, operating systems and mathematical coding are contained within a metal box which is a 21st century computer. Perhaps the acrylic also links to the soft plastic material on which circuits are printed for example in keyboards, which, with the pressure of the keys may well move up and down like the sea in motion.
With titles such as “The Greater the Fidelity, the Shorter the Longevity” and “Approximately Precise”, Zawada’s works are full of double meanings: order and chaos seen together as they are in physics; one frozen moment contained within an expansive period of time so that a static object appears to pulsate and dance; light which is both a small particle and a larger wave, two dimensional at one moment; three dimensional the next, and that’s before the addition of time to take it into a fourth dimension.
Several of the works link directly with computer coding and algorithms, not immediately obvious to the viewer, but adding a layer of mathematics and science behind the apparent visual trickery. Zawada brings science, informatics, computing, physics and art together in these works.
