Simeon Nelson

Simeon Nelson 'Desiring Machine' 2005

Simeon Nelson 'Wallzip' 2005

Plywood, wood dye, beeswax, 480cm x 360cm x 20cm

Simeon Nelson 'Desiring Machine' 2005

Simeon Nelson 'Dendrite' 2003

Laser cut steel and MDF, 42cm x 42cm x 36cm

Simeon Nelson 'Arachne' 2007

Plywood, wood dye, 310cm x 180cm x 13cm

Simeon Nelson 'Arachne' 2007

Plywood, wood dye, 310cm x 180cm x 13cm

Simeon Nelson 'Wallzip' 2005

Plywood, wood dye, beeswax, 480cm x 360cm x 20cm

Simeon Nelson 'Ornamatrix' 2005

Laser cut plywood, wood dye, 180cm x 300cm x 300cm

Simeon Nelson 'Cryptosphere' 2008

Plywood, steel, paint, dimensions variable

Simeon Nelson 'Ornamatrix' 2005

Laser cut plywood, wood dye, 180cm x 300cm x 300cm

Simeon Nelson 'Cryptosphere' 2008

Plywood, steel, paint, dimensions variable

Simeon Nelson 'Arachne' 2007

Plywood, wood dye, 310cm x 180cm x 13cm

Simeon Nelson 'Cryptosphere' 2008

Plywood, steel, paint, dimensions variable

Simeon Nelson 'Cryptosphere' 2008

Plywood, steel, paint, dimensions variable

Simeon Nelson 'Stilfragen' 2004

Plywood, wood dye, dimensions variable

Simeon Nelson 'Desiring Machine' 2005

2600 50mm dots are arranged on a 100mm grid covering the end wall of the upstairs space of Tactile Bosch gallery. This strict geometric arrangement is occasionally interrupted by the insertion of an extra dot that pushes the immediately surrounding dots aside or a missing dot which pulls the immediately surrounding dots into toward the empty space. The viewer is confronted with a swirling universe of infinite perceptual possibilities. The slight imperfections in the grid send optical ripples over walls ceiling and floor, undermining the solidity of the architecture and inducing a vertigo and perceptual confusion.

This grid of dots is based partly on the illustrations of crystal lattices found in a science textbook. These lattices are invariably contaminated with missing or extra molecules that disrupt the perfection of the grid. At the molecular scale there is no solidity, no ‘thing’ just atoms vibrating about their loci attracted and repelled by fundamental forces of nature. The idea for this installation comes out of my interest in how we see the world, how we negotiate our surroundings and how we believe what we see.

This drawing tries to encode the idea of a loop of consciousness proposed by physicists like Erwin Schodinger, John Wheeler and David Bohm, the idea that the universe has somehow given rise to structures or patterns so complex (us) that these structures (we) have created second order patterns with which to mirror the universe back on itself (art, science, myth). So this drawing tries to give a sense of the universe looking back at us looking at it so that the external and the internal worlds are fused.

I generated The CAD drawing below by intuitive geometry, a little arithmetic was used to provide the orbital distances. It came partly out of my conversations about the multiverse with astrophysicists Bernard Carr and Robert Priddey and to me it has a sense of a boundlessly creative field or matrix with possible worlds emerging at the points of concretion. I also see it as a diagram of being, with locations of being represented by the centres of the nets and connections between them spinning off in spiral vectors. there are vague interstices between them not quite of their geometry but not too far off. Crystal diffraction is much on my mind at the moment as I am shortlisted for a sculpture at St John’s College, Oxford to commemorate chemist John Kendrew and his Nobel Prize for determining the stucture of myoglobin with x-ray crystallography.