253 North 3rd St.
Philadelphia, PA

Earth Is Base

Nicholas Gottlund
October 1 - 23, 2010

In their material and process, the works from Earth Is Base address the act of reproduction. Clay, wood, and paper. Casting, printing, and photography. The remade object is not made for a discreet purpose, but is remade as an act in itself. The original, the corresponding space, and the copy.

As a piece of wood is petrified, minerals slowly replace the plant's decaying cells and stone forms in its place. The stone is a natural cast, the organism holds a space, the space is preserved and the form is physically remade. Fossils, the crust of the earth, tracks, are all in a sense a mould. A hollow shape of the most fundamental material.

Often, as in the case of digital and photographic reproduction, the original exists as an ideal, elusive and hidden from its worldly form. An attribute of the natural world, the cast reproduction exists in a unique relationship with its corresponding original, neither illuminating nor obscuring the original form, but representing it in its most basic sense.

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