@ Pablo's Birthday 04.2012
Artists Gero & Rees have developed a Tactical Play Exchange strategy to co-create a series of artworks over the past year. These works are forms that generally begin with contextual architectural elements derived from the site of exhibition, for example, the floor plan of the gallery, or other localized features. These become the core structures or null objects that will be added to, morphed and modified in multiple iterations using 3D modeling software. The digital files are passed back and forth between Gero & Rees creating a networked 'ground of play' that will extend itself, as adaptive potentiation, finally resulting in objects that are extensive transitive structures.
Developed by combining Play theory with Systems theory, Gero & Rees utilize the concept of operativity; in other words, the operation is the significant systemic constituent. They are play in the sense of a to- and-fro movement that becomes a transformation into structure. The structures or objects are infinitely malleable, produceable and "playable-with", they cannot be attributed to an originator, so no one artist is privileged as author. Instead they can be seen as a series of actions, and in this case an action is always a system, because it is not a final, irreducible entity, but a complex emergence presupposed from plural exchanges or plays.
For this exhibition Gero & Rees will use the gallery floor plan to begin a series that will leading to hundreds of iterations, they will then select a number of the forms to physically produce by using a combination of 3D printing (rapid prototype), CNC milling and hand working the structures. In the radical multiplication of objects an energetically unique ecosystem will be created.
Robert Gero is a philosopher and artist working in New York.
Michael Rees is an artist working in New York.
Interview with Vanessa Saraceno
checklist for the exhibition
