Toby Ziegler: The sudden longing to collapse 30 years of distance

Simon Lee Gallery is proud to present The sudden longing to collapse 30 years of distance, Toby Ziegler’s sixth solo exhibition with the gallery, in which the artist explores the complex relationships between experience and memory, image and data, through the twin lens of figuration and abstraction.

The exhibition can be experienced in two dramatically different states. The gallery is lined with a group of large geometric, non-figurative works on paper, reminiscent of Ziegler’s early works, juxtaposed with a group of smaller more figurative oil paintings on aluminium. Periodically though, the tranquil space of the gallery is transformed into a multi-projector video installation, in which a barrage of projected images covers the walls and overlays the 2D works, to a soundtrack that oscillates between melody and noise.

In the works on paper, Ziegler takes as his point of departure a group of ‘ghost files’: digital images he lost to an unresponsive hard drive fifteen years ago that have recently been retrieved. Rather than returning to the original idea – distorted by the intervening years – Ziegler reconciles the past and present in an entirely new narrative, reactivating the files from their years of suspended animation.