Tomlinson Kong Contemporary is pleased to announce Lost-and-Found, an exhibition by the Austrian-born, American sculptor and installation artist Johannes Girardoni. Fresh off the critical success of his light and sound installation at the 54th Venice Biennale in the exhibition, Personal Structures, Girardoni is presenting new work composed of over-painted photographs, sculptures and site-specific installations.

The core vocabulary of Girardoni’s work is the convergence of light and material re-articulated into different physical forms. The situations he creates with his work are ones in which the viewer has to discern what is virtual and what is real. This minimalist concept of requiring the interaction of the viewer makes sense as Girardoni’s work is part of the ongoing dialogue that investigates the way art affects our physical reality and the space it occupies.

His over-painted photographs, referred to as “Exposed Icons,” are the result of a trip to Mali in 2008 that inspired him to see Western culture through a new lens. He began to see our physical environment as a result of the convergence of virtual and physical information, and billboards as iconic artifacts of the fundamental role advertising plays in forming the way we see ourselves. In Mali he saw a raw, pure and non-aestheticized culture that contrasted sharply with Western reality where our infrastructure is built on the convergence of digital and material systems. Girardoni began photographing the backsides or empty faces of billboards and digitally superimposing exposures to create new, visual structures. The digital images are then mounted onto aluminum where he further interacts with them by painting over portions of the image. The virtual algorithm of light required to create digital images converges in “Exposed Icons” with the physical paint and aluminum support to create a third form that contributes a new physical artifact to our surroundings.

Girardoni’s light and sound sculptures, referred to as “Refrequencers” or “Peak Light Extractions,” are a further expression of these same interests. Made of cast-resin pieces back-lit with LED panels, these works shift in appearance and color depending on the current light situation and the position and movement of the viewer. “Refrequencers” capture and digitally slow the waveforms emanating from the resin using sensors that reprocess the light information. In “Peak Light Extractions,” Girardoni measures and isolates the highest intensity light frequencies coming through the resin, which provide the analogous color information of the loosely articulated paint of the constructed plywood panels. Perception and truth converge in these works by exploring the way information systems alter our behavior thereby creating constantly shifting realities.