UCP Presents Garry Noland – Slope Failure

Friday, September 21st to Saturday, October 13th, 2007

Slope Failure is a site-specific installation of new work by Garry Noland featuring a combination of freestanding sculptures constructed of duct tape and National Geographic magazines; wall-leaning pieces composed of stacked television sets; and wall-hung drawings – all drawing inspiration from the notion of ‘slope failure.”

The term slope failure, a cause of landslides in nature, references movement or tearing of the soil, revealing the structure of what lies underneath. Noland equates this with an artistic tearing away at existing surfaces to reveal new surfaces below. “There are many things in the non-human part of nature that we humans see as echoes of our own situation and predicament,” writes Noland. “This is just one of them.” Noland’s work also incorporates pattern, which to him exemplifies basic conditions of our existence: “Two people standing together, talking, have no identity without the space between them,” he notes. “Similarly the continent of the Americas, for instance, would have no separate identity from Europe/Africa without the space provided by the ocean. The two situations (the couple, the continents) both rely equally on the spaces between, as well as the objects themselves, for definition… each are equal…neither are ‘positive’ or ‘negative’.”