Cultural Nature: Gregor Kregar

Cultural Nature, Gregor Kregar's inaugural solo exhibition with Gow Langsford Gallery features an immersive environment of gleaming metallic sculpture and glazed stoneware ceramics.  Disrupting the conventional gallery space, abstract sculptures hang from the ceiling and seemingly grow from the walls.  Several of the structures are highly reflective and mirror the viewer and surrounding space in refracted shards.  An integral component of Kregar's practice to date has been the interactive element of much of his work.  For this exhibition, in addition to reflective materials such as stainless steel, Kregar has been working with new substances such as chameleon paint.  This relies on the viewer's movement around the work to reveal the paint's multi-coloured properties and the theretofore hidden variability of the work.

The distinctive form of Kregar's aluminium and stainless steel works is key to many of the concerns explored within his wider practice. The pieces embody the contradictions of nature versus culture, and the mathematical versus a more intuitive artistic process. Comprised of a number of smaller geometrical units, the works appear self-determining, growing like crystalline formations.  Their structure echoes some of our world's more elemental building blocks - of molecules, of DNA.  Developed from small cardboard models, Kregar also refers to his large, full size works as models.  Inherent in this reference is a realm of possibility, stemming from the artist's interest in Constructivism and utopian architecture, and the different ways in which sculpture can operate.