Tim Lewis
Tim Lewis combines mechanical devices and sculpture to investigate, test and experiment with its own doubts and perception of the world. He is a British artist based in London, and studied at the Royal College of Art 1984-87. He is represented by Flowers Gallery, and has worked with Kinetica on numerous exhibitions and projects including exhibiting at Kinetica’s recent art fair in February 2011.
Stemming from an early fascination with strange objects, Lewis’ work raises questions and imaginations around the boundaries between nature and fabrication. He endows objects with properties that they do not naturally possess - chairs walk, birds nest in shoes and man-animal-machine hybrids are brought to life - leaving nature to the constructed and vice versa. Through this combining of mechanical objects and sculpture, he is able to investigate and experiment within these boundaries, using his own doubts and perceptions of the world as a guide.
As such, Lewis’ work creates a world in which artist is engineer. Defying easy categorisation, this engineering takes bits and pieces of inspiration from not only kinetic art, but also from a wide range of possibilities, including the development of photography and genetics. Objects become invention, fetishised into mechanical forms. These new constructions of the world hint cunningly to the artist’s imagination and his point of perception which lie behind their creation. But artist is also absent. Objects are autonomous, new beings that require their own comprehension. The strangeness of each object requires strangeness in return; we pause to comprehend, to actually make sense of the object as it crosses our own perceptions of the world. And so these new autonomous objects do also carry their own flight, casting themselves into the world.