Lot 23: PAUL PERRY

PAUL PERRY BRITISH B. 1956 NUCLEAR GARDEN II 2001 painted steel, cast and painted resin (the stones), uranium ore and water (contained in a small canister which protrudes from one of the stones) 160 x 600 x 250 cm / 63 x 236 x 98"

Some recent solo exhibitions
Groninger Museum, 2001, 'Immortality Suite'

Some recent group exhibitions
De Kleine Biënnale, Utrecht 2004
Fries Museum, Leeuwarden 2002, 'Franciscus'
Triennale di Milano, Milan 2001

Selected publications
Sally O'Reilly, The Body in Contemporary Art, Thames & Hudson 2009
Eduardo Kac, Signs of Life: Bio Art and Beyond, MIT Press 2007
Marco Paulo Rolla, Marcos Hill, MIP: international performance manifestation, Belo Horizonte: CEIA 2005
The black box; The BMW book The blank book The weird but true book; Interviews: the book; I on a lion in zion, Vilnius: Contemporary Art Centre/Frankfurt: Revolver 2005
Martin Bril [et al.], Op hoogte gedacht: beeldende kunst op Groninger kerkhoven, Groningen: [s.n.] 2004

Selected public and corporate collections
Groninger Museum, NL • Kunst Openbare Ruimte Zoetermeer, NL

donated by the artist

Perry's work is a rather eclectic mix of art, science and philosophy, specifically exploring the boundaries between culture and nature. Nuclear Garden II is Perry's formal variant of a Japanese Zen garden, typically a garden without plants, such as the 'dry landscape' found at the Ryo¯an-ji temple in Kyoto, where an arrangements of stones is set among a pattern of raked sand. An essential but invisible component of Perry's variation, which forgoes the raked sand in favour of a black steel frame construction supporting a number of stones, is the small quantity of uranium reactor fuel contained within one of the stones. 'What interests me about uranium is that it is an almost never-ending (poetic) source of energy and as such becomes a miniature sun held within the garden that outwardly continues as an object of aesthetic contemplation.' The presence of the small quantity of uranium recalls in part the natural nuclear fission reactor which occurred at Oklo (Gabon) 2 billion years ago and ran untended (but in perfect equilibrium) for a few hundred thousand years. We emphasise 'recalls in part ...' because the amount of uranium in Nuclear Garden II is so small that the reactor can never reach 'critical mass'. As such it is a 'sub-critical' nuclear reactor.

Paul Perry is advisor at the Rijksakademie.

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