Toby Ziegler: The Alienation of Objects

The New Art Gallery Walsall is delighted to present a major installation by British artist Toby Ziegler, in collaboration with the Zabludowicz Collection. This ambitious, site- specific sculptural installation was originally commissioned in 2010 by this leading international contemporary art collection for their London project space. The installation, which features a body of aluminium sculptures and ready-mades, will be re-developed and designed specifically for the spacious galleries of The New Art Gallery Walsall.

The Alienation of Objects is a sculptural installation consisting of new sculptures and readymades inspired by found images of art historical objects; an Iberian stone head stolen from the Louvre for Pablo Picasso; a neo-classical sculpture of a panther; a pair of Staffordshire pottery dogs; a Hellenic sculpture of a hermaphrodite couple and a classical Venus. All of these objects have been damaged or have lost definition through the passage of time.

Ziegler’s process further distorts and amends their form. He begins with low resolution photographs found in books and on the internet. These images too have lost or gained information and narratives over the years. He then uses 3D software to model the objects, and working from these digital projections, forms them in oxidised aluminium polygons riveted together to create a skin.

The scale of the works stages an interplay between hollowness and mass, creating large volumes out of a thin skin of metal and playing with perception, perspective and the mapping of constructions in space.

Ziegler is interested in the ways in which we receive and interpret information, for example; the transmission of images or artefacts across historical periods or through different media. His works play up the losses and alterations that are incurred when an artefact is communicated across these breaches, confronting the supposed flawlessness of digital processes and the idiosyncrasies of the hand-made.

Toby Ziegler is also known for his distinctive paintings. Whilst this is his first purely sculptural exhibition, the installation maintains the strong elements of composition found in his paintings.

Toby Ziegler
The Alienation of Objects