COLLIDER
FOLDING | UNFOLDING
Artsphere, Arlington, VA
November 13th- January 15th, 2011
COLLIDER is the collaborative team of LA-based artist, Lia Halloran and Sarah Strauss of BigProtype Architecture in Brooklyn. Both artists use this opportunity to push beyond the normal parameters of their practices and challenge each other to play and experiment. Introduced in graduate school at Yale University in 1999, (Folding Unfolding) is the result of their conversations exploring energy and gravity, form and order, lesbians and skateboarding and, most recently, the Cave of the Crystal Giants in Mexico and the molecular organization of crystals.
Expanding upon Halloran’s The Only Way Out is Through, a series of crystal landscape paintings based on the Naica Mine in Chihuahua, COLLDIER researched the molecular structures and physical formations of different crystals. Developing 3D digital models to understand the complex geometries at work, they discovered crystals are highly ordered and repetitive; yet the formations themselves are largely influenced by their environment yielding organic, non-repetitive clusters. Utilizing cutting-edge 3D modeling technologies and advanced laser cutters, COLLDIER has replicated the forms of crystals (borax, gypsum, neptunite and quartz). Fabricated from Ultralight®, crystals stand 4 to 6 feet tall; yet weigh only 40 to 70 pounds. The pristine surface, rock-solid form and ambiguity of material creates tension between experience and analysis and provides a meditation on the forces of weight, mass, gravity and space.