Private View, 12 April 2006
The Temple, Great Eastern Hotel, 40 Liverpool Street, London EC2M7QN
Petit Mal is an important new work by Paul Fryer, made in association with physicist and engineer Colin Dancer. Petit Mal is a lightning generator which produces over a million volts in the form of a blue-white arc which travels through the air between two towers. It could be viewed as a super-neuron, unattached from a gigantic brain, firing in the darkness.
The piece will be shown for one night only on the 12th of April 2006 at The Temple within the Great Eastern Hotel, Liverpool Street. Presented in conjunction with Kristy Stubbs Gallery, Dallas. We are plesed to announce that Paul Fryer and Colin Dancer will be in attendance on the evening to answer questions about the piece.
It is the second of his electromagnetic machine-sculptures. The first, Deus Ex Machina, was exhibited in his solo show Carpe Noctum at the Trolley Gallery, London in March 2005 and was purchased by Damien Hirst for the Murderme collection.
Petit Maldiffers from its predecessor Deus Ex Machina in many ways, the most obvious being power. The new sculpture is much more energetic, producing lightning which may reach beyond six feet. It's appearance is also radically different, with reformed internal architecture dictating that it arcs to itself, whereas Deus Ex Machina would fire out in all directions towards the cage which imprisoned it. Petit Mal is not caged, and therefore does not fight to escape. It has a beauty which transcends its violent nature. It is an evolution of the brutally trapped demon that is Deus Ex Machina, elegantly conceived with tall Japanese Lacquered cabinets whose proportions and form communicate a sensuality absent in the earlier more aggressive sibling.
The title Petit Mal refers to minor epilepsy in the temporal lobes of the brain often associated with charismatic religious experience. Electrical activity causes neurons to fire and this has been seen to regularly affect individuals who experience fantastic visions and voices. Petit Mal fits often pass undetected by observers, the only signs of which being a slightly vacant trance which often passes in under a minute.
Subjective time may be an entirely different matter, the voyager being propelled through Blakeian visions whose duration cannot be measured objectively, or having revelations of a spiritual nature which may affect them for the rest of their lives.
Electricity could be seen as the stuff of thought. It enables our brains to function in the firing of neurons. Lightning is the primal form of electricity. Lightning was almost certainly the progenitor of life on earth, as high voltage strikes altered the chemistry of the infant land to form the enantiomeric amino acid precursors of life itself.