Toby Ziegler: The Alienation of Objects

The Zabludowicz Collection present a solo exhibition by British artist Toby Ziegler. The centrepiece of this exhibition is a vast installation featuring a new body of aluminium sculptures alongside readymades including a weather balloon and a mechanical bull. Working from found images sourced from the internet or publications, Ziegler’s practice starts with computer aided 3‐D design and evolves through hand modelling, to confront the supposed flawlessness of digital processes with the idiosyncrasies of the handmade. The process also incorporates art‐historical references and culminates in monumental sculptures composed of oxidized aluminium triangles. Their scale stages an interplay between hollowness and mass, creating large volumes out of a thin skin of metal and playing with perception, perspective and the mapping of constructions in space.

In addition to this new commission Ziegler has worked with Zabludowicz Collection Director Elizabeth Neilson to produce an exhibition of works by other artists, drawing out their affinities with his practice. Throughout the run of the exhibition an artist’s cinema screened film and video works that explore one of Ziegler’s central concerns: the collision of two‐ and three‐dimensional representation. Other free public events include an illustrated talk by the artist and curator George Unsworth and a series of larger than life drawing classes with the Channel 4 and Artangel commissioned Life Class: Today's Nude by Alan Kane, a siz meter HD projected life drawing class narrated by leading artists.

The exhibition selected by Ziegler included works from the Zabludowicz Collection, by Mathilde ter Heijne, Peter Fischli & David Weiss, Josh Tonsfeldt, Michelle Williams Gamaker and Oliver Michaels. 

Toby Ziegler: The Alienation of Objects will tour to the New Art Gallery Walsall between 8 April - 20 June 2011 and  Kiasma Museum of Contemporary Art, Helsinki, Finland 28 September 2012 to 13 January 2013 before enventually being installed by the artist at the Zabludowicz Collections home in Sarvisalo, Finland. In each itteration the artist has entirely rethought and contextualised the five central sculptures for the new location.