proxy gallery

Proxy Gallery is pleased to present a solo exhibition by Roy Dowell
.
His sculpture Untitled #1049, Cardboard, paper and acrylic measures 9" x 5" x 4" and is his first monumentally scaled work to date, occupying almost the entire space inside Proxy Gallery.

Simultaneously small and large, it becomes the occasion of a mental and visual dance since we are either seeing some huge architecture from very far away, of a small thing from really close up.

This same dialogic or interactive relationship exists between the sculpture and its referrents or sources. Far from being a simple appropriation of such sources (folk souvenirs, craft miniaturized or enlarged) the sculpture becomes itself a point of departure, changing forever the way we think about other objects. The Platonic hierarchy between ideal mental forms and their mere copies in the world is confronted with presence and materiality.

It is common to define art as that which is the opposite of the utilitarian object. Here, however, the specificity and integrity of Dowell's engineering places the piece on the side of a mysterious yet specific instrument whose form, far from being arbitrary, follows a rigorous logic.