blank is pleased to present Notes on a grid, a solo exhibition by Kyle Morland (b.1986, Johannesburg) and his sixth with the gallery.
This exhibition has 11 starting points: 11 sculptures, variously formed in stainless steel, aluminium, and plaster. They act as 11 coordinates or cues. They are prompts, a network of parallels and perpendiculars that render sequence non-linear but in chorus and company. In this way, Kyle Morland’s latest exhibition, Notes on a grid, is a gathering.
The gathering begins outside as Morland collects landmarks, flowers, shapes, conduits, and forms. These objects sit as a sequence of moments in his studio, as a rhetoric for how objects might adhere to one another and assemble to make a larger form.
Morland’s previous works have often been described as a corporeal alphabet, a series of angular, living symbols that can be read in prose, colour, and space. However, in this installation, the legibility is vertical and disarming. Polished sculptures reflect the bulging gaze of viewers, and truncated plaster forms bare their undertones, pinkish-green. Rather than prose, Morland offers cut stems, a collection of “pick up sticks”, a game, and a dance that tricks the intellectual back to the instinctual. There are no idle hands.
This ordered scattering is, therefore, best read as a score. Like notes on sheet music, at different volumes, the sculptures are an arrangement made to be performed. Morland leaves the choreography of the grid to the gatherers to see what they might do and how they, too, may derive a sequence on non-linear terms through multiple entrances. Mutual interpretation and improvisation exist in the solidarity of material, form, and blocking. And, 11 remains a prime number, divisible by itself or one – in absolute relation and retention.
Exhibition press:
Mamelodi Marakalala, A Gathering of Eleven in Kyle Morland’s ‘Notes on a Grid’ | Medium [online] (published 17 November 2024)
This exhibition has 11 starting points: 11 sculptures, variously formed in stainless steel, aluminium, and plaster. They act as 11 coordinates or cues. They are prompts, a network of parallels and perpendiculars that render sequence non-linear but in chorus and company. In this way, Kyle Morland’s latest exhibition, Notes on a grid, is a gathering.
The gathering begins outside as Morland collects landmarks, flowers, shapes, conduits, and forms. These objects sit as a sequence of moments in his studio, as a rhetoric for how objects might adhere to one another and assemble to make a larger form.
Morland’s previous works have often been described as a corporeal alphabet, a series of angular, living symbols that can be read in prose, colour, and space. However, in this installation, the legibility is vertical and disarming. Polished sculptures reflect the bulging gaze of viewers, and truncated plaster forms bare their undertones, pinkish-green. Rather than prose, Morland offers cut stems, a collection of “pick up sticks”, a game, and a dance that tricks the intellectual back to the instinctual. There are no idle hands.
This ordered scattering is, therefore, best read as a score. Like notes on sheet music, at different volumes, the sculptures are an arrangement made to be performed. Morland leaves the choreography of the grid to the gatherers to see what they might do and how they, too, may derive a sequence on non-linear terms through multiple entrances. Mutual interpretation and improvisation exist in the solidarity of material, form, and blocking. And, 11 remains a prime number, divisible by itself or one – in absolute relation and retention.
Text by Nathalie Viruly
Exhibition press:
Mamelodi Marakalala, A Gathering of Eleven in Kyle Morland’s ‘Notes on a Grid’ | Medium [online] (published 17 November 2024)
