1-52 / one to fifty-two

1-52 is a series of drawings recording the developing arrangement of a deck of playing cards, flicked one at a time, face-down, onto a piece of paper of the same proportions as the cards, made as a physical arrangement of all 52 drawings and as an animation. 

1-52 (red), 2017 (excerpt)
Series of 52 drawings. Pencil on paper, each 41 x 27.7cm
Also made as a gif animation, 10 mins

A companion piece, One to Fifty-Two, draws out the composition from the last of the series of 52 card drawings as a wall-relief, constructed from the same size pieces of paper as the series of drawings
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The drawings in 1-52 examine position and relation as formal information. The installation as a whole looks to the further interpretation of more subtle and contextual information; the making of the works, the artists’ personalities and approaches, the circumstances of the works’ exhibiting, and so on, which are contemplated as multi-level responses to all elements, at all scales, involved in the interaction of object and observer.  This relation of observer to object is given particular emphasis in One to Fifty-Two.

1-52 (red) installed at PS, Amsterdam, 2017

Photo courtesy of PS projectspace

The works’ focussing on this order of interaction explores this as a possible mechanism for the self-organisation of the general, highly complex and perhaps truly indeterminate processes which form the world.

One to Fifty-Two (red), installed at PS, Amsterdam, 2017

Photo courtesy of PS projectspace

Random 52 card arrangement (red): 2 of Hearts shown in blue
(as selected by Jan van der Ploeg), 2017
Pencil on paper, 41 x 27.7cm

An open-ended series of drawings:  a participant chooses a card from a pack of 52 playing-cards. The cards are distributed face-down, to form a unique, random arrangement, without the position of the selected card being known.  Checking each card in turn, this arrangement is then reproduced as a drawing in red, with the selected card being shown in blue.

Photo courtesy of PS projectspace