Laptop Dinner by Pii at Spectrum London

Spectrum Fine Art, the London art gallery committed to exhibiting fresh talent alongside established contemporary artists announces its latest exhibition featuring a site-specific sculpture from avant-garde Dutch artist Pii. The exhibition launches on Tuesday 1st September and runs until Saturday 17th September 2005.

Laptop Dinner is a distinctive piece that reproduces a table set for a meal, complete with lamps and cutlery, each framing 12 bronze cast laptops. Instead of a screen, each laptop is filled with different kinds of basic food, specifically special types of rice and corn, representative of some of the largest regions on earth. Pii combines his own self-professed obsessive interest in the simplest processes of energy transformation with the latest in technology development.

Conversion and transformation of matter are themes which carry through much of his work. His preferred medium is metal, a substance whose combination of malleability yet inflexibility appeals to the artist. Past successes have included an installation of multiple human stomachs, cast in aluminium, packaged together like a warped Matryoshka doll, entitled “Does My Stomach Eat Another Human Stomach?” which aims to represent digestion as a process of conversion.

Pii’s sculptures will be supported by Scottish artist Gerry Burns, winner of the Daily Mails’ inaugural ‘Not The Turner Prize’ for his figurative painting ‘Birkenhead Park.’—a work eventually bought by actor Ewan McGregor who spotted it in a Glasgow restaurant. Burns will unveil entirely new work which addresses the concept of ‘the original’ and ‘the copy’. He delivers a series of original paintings initially appearing inaccessible as a result of being completely shrouded in brown paper. Closer examination reveals a small photographic snapshot of the image stapled to the paper, juxtaposing the genuine with the imitation.

Since its inception in September 2004 with the exhibition Artists of Fame and Promise, Spectrum Fine Art has remained dedicated to encouraging and assisting the most promising young professional artists, while continuing to support established names. Younger artists who have exhibited at Spectrum include Kim Rugg and Sam St. Leger, in conjunction with acknowledged figures such as Eduardo Paolozzi, Peter Blake, Dianne Kaufman and Dennis Morris.