Air

For this game to work, the assorted objects must be open to reinterpretation. Nearly all the items from the artist’s collection are obsolete, or ‘recently redundant’ as he describes them. Neither topical nor nostalgic, they can be readily reinscribed with new meaning. Pound’s process is closer to the institution’s than you may think, which always assigns a task to the things it purchases and displays. An abandoned bicycle pump, a vase that will never again display flowers, or a Japanese fan that produces no breeze — these pieces have been relieved of their original use and put to work as exemplary aesthetic objects. Over the past decade, Pound has worked alongside fellow artist Rowan McNaught to develop specialised software to retrieve similarity from the depths of the internet. In the screen-based works shown in the GOMA foyer cabinet for ‘Air’, the search engines begin with a discrete set of images — Pound’s ‘found’ photographs or photos submitted by the public — and then identify a sequence of supposedly similar images online. The internet’s game of likeness is more formally driven than Pound’s ‘analogue’ connections, with the algorithm picking up on the lines, shadows and highlights of comparable images until it inevitably arrives at pure black or pure white. The search program also brings exciting linguistic missteps: when it mistakes fluted pan for pan flute, for example, a new chain of semblance ‘hiccups’ into existence. Patrick Pound’s works in ‘Air’ — both physical and algorithm-generated — relate to a topic that has long held his attention: ‘I’ve always liked the idea of capturing something you can’t see, or trying to come to terms with it, come to grips with it’. In other words, air must be grasped obliquely through the involvement of other, more concrete images and objects. In Pound’s world, air resists abstraction, its adequate symbol found in the world of everyday things. SR Patrick Pound / Air heading left (The air lock) (details) 2022 ‘Each item in Pound’s installation has some relation to the idea of air — what that relationship is, however, is left to each viewer’s interpretation and resolution.’ 195 194 Change Change