Expanded Narcissistic Envelope was a new installation by Toby Ziegler made in response to The Hepworth Wakefield’s new space The Calder.
The exhibition comprised a group of aluminium sculptures and a series of digital prints covering the walls and areas of the gallery floor. The installation was anchored by a painted floor grid that recalls the geometric visualisation of three-dimensional space in computer programming. Each of the sculptures was derived from an original source image taken from the internet, often of a body or body part, which Ziegler reconfigures and resizes into a new sculptural object.
This immersive installation continues Ziegler’s interest in processes of translation: from image to sculpture, figuration to abstraction, from the virtual to the physical.
Ziegler’s sculptures are made from thin aluminium sheets that create reflective, faceted surfaces, which echo the sculptures’ digital origins. Several of the works have been conceived as pairs where one acts as a distorted mirror of the other, giving physical form the conceptual processes of transformation that run through Ziegler’s practice.
The wall and floor-based printed surfaces, which carry images enlarged to the point of distortion, further highlight Ziegler’s interest how our perception of the world is increasingly mediated by technology.
