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Lot Essay
‘In Toby Ziegler’s paintings, imagery borrowed from art history is crafted from patterns of identical stars and discs – clouds might be borrowed from Constable, body parts from 16th-century pornography. Yet there’s no doubt his visuals originate anywhere other than CGI. Laid out according to exacting laws of perspective, they are 3D-looking vistas with illusory, kaleidoscopic depths’
(S. Sharwin, ‘Artist of the week 113: Toby Ziegler’, The Guardian, https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2010/nov/10/artist-week-toby-ziegler [accessed 7 September 2014]).
Geometric patterns swirl across Toby Ziegler’s canvas in a variety of shapes and sizes, combining gold leaf with opulent purple and flaming red hues to suggest a brilliant, abstracted sunset. Executed in 2006, The Grand Cause is a stunning example of British-born Ziegler’s mural-like and technically astute canvases. Through a masterly manipulation of perspective, he has created a stunning landscape, achieved by feeding appropriated images of clouds into a computer, and rendering these organic forms into geometric patterns. Printing these images out on a large scale, Ziegler then collages these forms together on a canvas and paints on top of them, as shown by the gestural, expressive quality of the spheres in the upper section of the canvas. The work’s perspective seemingly extends from the bottom right hand corner, and the pattern of the geometric shapes alters accordingly, from oval-shaped forms that suggest recession in the bottom section, culminating in large, spaced-out spheres in the top left hand corner.
As the viewer moves their eye across the canvas, mesmerizing perspectival shifts occur, and the painting’s surface quality vacillates between flatness and depth. Through material and chromatic contrasts, pitting gold leaf against matte paint and bright coral against darker purple, Ziegler has created a rich surface texture which emphasises the layers of depth and space he has created. Blending geometric dexterity with rich painterly gesture, Ziegler’s work oscillates between abstraction and figuration, merging classical composition with digital manipulation. Operating in a space between the familiar and the strange, and uniting the rigidity of graphic design with the spontaneity of painterly expression, The Grand Cause is a stunning example of Ziegler’s uniquely paradoxical practice.
(S. Sharwin, ‘Artist of the week 113: Toby Ziegler’, The Guardian, https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2010/nov/10/artist-week-toby-ziegler [accessed 7 September 2014]).
Geometric patterns swirl across Toby Ziegler’s canvas in a variety of shapes and sizes, combining gold leaf with opulent purple and flaming red hues to suggest a brilliant, abstracted sunset. Executed in 2006, The Grand Cause is a stunning example of British-born Ziegler’s mural-like and technically astute canvases. Through a masterly manipulation of perspective, he has created a stunning landscape, achieved by feeding appropriated images of clouds into a computer, and rendering these organic forms into geometric patterns. Printing these images out on a large scale, Ziegler then collages these forms together on a canvas and paints on top of them, as shown by the gestural, expressive quality of the spheres in the upper section of the canvas. The work’s perspective seemingly extends from the bottom right hand corner, and the pattern of the geometric shapes alters accordingly, from oval-shaped forms that suggest recession in the bottom section, culminating in large, spaced-out spheres in the top left hand corner.
As the viewer moves their eye across the canvas, mesmerizing perspectival shifts occur, and the painting’s surface quality vacillates between flatness and depth. Through material and chromatic contrasts, pitting gold leaf against matte paint and bright coral against darker purple, Ziegler has created a rich surface texture which emphasises the layers of depth and space he has created. Blending geometric dexterity with rich painterly gesture, Ziegler’s work oscillates between abstraction and figuration, merging classical composition with digital manipulation. Operating in a space between the familiar and the strange, and uniting the rigidity of graphic design with the spontaneity of painterly expression, The Grand Cause is a stunning example of Ziegler’s uniquely paradoxical practice.