Arario Gallery Seoul Cheongdam is pleased to present a solo exhibition by Tom Price, an artist celebrated in British contemporary design world for his unique material experimentations. The exhibition presents a total of 12 works by the artist, including 10 chairs from his representative work Melt Down series, as well as the painting PP EXP and the large installation work PP Tree which gives a general overview of the artist’s oeuvre. Presenting works that encompass the realms of both fine art and design in this day and age where the dividing line between art and industrial art is ever more blurred, this exhibition provides a glimpse into the new possibilities in art.

Tom Price is a British-born artist whose unconventional use of material and approach in diverse kinds of works cross over fields of design and fine art. He focuses on the process in which common and everyday materials are completely and newly reinvented, and constructs the original material and the modified material in a strange but beautiful way. Price received the spotlight as a designer for his Melt Down series, which is made of various plastic material such as 10,000 nylon cables, blue rope, clusters of Polypropylene (PP) and Polyethylene (PE) , and recycled fabric. A new form and outcome results every time, as a seat-shaped former is heated and pressed into each independent ball of various materials. Price’s chairs are based on the ergonomic form of Eames Chair in order to maintain the unique frame of appearance of a hand-made original work of art while capturing the innate characteristic of coziness and comfort of a chair. The particularity in Price’s chairs is the distinct contrast between the melted and the non-melted part, demonstrating a new artistic possibility through the division of original nature, texture and color.

The installation work PP TREE was inspired by the contemporary plastic-consuming social system, in which every aspect of daily life of people today is affected by the overflow of cheap disposable products. The abuse of such plastic yields a negative image on the material itself of plastic and plastic objects. However, the artist questions our way of thinking and recognition through PP Tree, which is made of discarded polypropylene pipes and utility plastic products. The work consists of trees like full-blown cherry blossoms installed throughout the exhibition space. The individual plastic pipe that makes up the tree is bent and tied with rope to create stalks and branches. The full blown flower petals made of thin slices of pipe are affixed on the bent and twisted tree branches. The shape of the tree is arranged in the space in carefree directions and not according to a certain standard, creating an unpredictable structure and form. The plastic tree, completed through a myriad of trial and errors, is a metaphor of the long process through which nature is created. Emanating delicacy and mystique through the light that penetrates and radiates from the small tube openings, PP TREE re-focuses on a realm of art in which the very identity and significance of material itself has been forgotten.

The painting PP EXP is made of cross cuts of black and grey polypropylene pipes. The end of each cross cut is burnt, and the original color and form are replaced by a strange whirlpool-like form. This is a product of chance as well as a process in which the essence of each pipe cross cut reveals itself. The artist states that he is able to efficiently deliver his core idea by realizing the results of such experimentation. He also explains that by giving a distance to the process in which one material burns, melts, fades and fuses, he can endow a sense of life to the inherent attributes of each material.