Refigured, the latest body of work from Ian Collings, asserts concept as function and intention as use. Contemplative and immediate, these works address the metaphysical connection between the earth, the stone, and our shared existence. Refigured asks: How does our experience of an object change when we reconsider our relationship to its material story? In what ways is our viewing of the object collaborative?
Having formed over billions of years and already having undergone countless changes, some dull and unassuming boulders are pushed up through the ground from a distant silence. They are potentialities, in an endless state of reconfiguration. Despite their mass they are ephemeral, living as temporary forms. As such, they are not documents of a striving for idealistic clarity, but of curiosity and exploration.
The polished surfaces become blurred by an orange glow that reveals a confusion of material boundaries and uses. It maintains possibility as a static and infinite medium. The narrative of Refigured is one exploring our relationship to the nature of things and the stories we tell; of how these mirrored subjects bring new meaning to one another through the immaterial qualities they can produce.