VIENNA.- With his new series of works »Seeped into Form«, The Polish-born and Vienna-based artist Gregor Eldarb takes the audience on a multi-layered exploration of the creation of forms and spaces. The title ‘Seeped Into Form’ refers to the slow and organic process by which ideas, concepts and environmental influences are transformed into visible and tangible structures.

Eldarb uses a sophisticated reference system in his artistic work, which forms the background but also the cement in the construction plan of both his paintings and his films. The primarily abstract formal languages contain substantial content that is selectively combined with figurative elements or the use of text quotations.

Eldarb’s film on view entitled- A Seed is Planted immerses the viewer in the materiality of flowing, merging and drifting forms, pulsating surfaces and polarized refractions of light. Complex field structures mysteriously emerge before disintegrating again or forming interferences. Dancing drops crystallize out of heavy, reflective liquids, only to dissolve and melt away in the next moment.

The experimental film is a homage to liquid crystals. Accompanied by Stefan Németh's atmospheric sound and a poetic-theoretical lecture containing excerpts from Esther Leslie's book Liquid Crystals, Eldarb devotes himself to the visualization of this technical phenomenon. With the help of the catchy, AI-generated voice of the writer Kenneth Patchen (1911-1972) and fascinating images, he unleashes the essence of a substance that results from the interplay of inherently contradictory properties of the fluid and the crystalline. Guided by invisible, waxing and waning forces, manifold formations emerge. The film develops its attraction from their constant reformulation and metamorphosis.

In addition, a series of large and medium format paintings, primarily in black, white and gray, representing delicate geometric figures and patterns appear to be etched or scratched into the surface of the paintings expand his previous work with graphic elements often presented as collages and exhibition booklets refer to the visual reference system used for the video, but also to historical, media or material contexts: these include images of the inner workings of a camera lens, works by Nam June Paik or an oil advertisement from the 1970s, which are reflected in the ferrofluid oil in the video. Eldarb has also glazed parts of the prints with the brown, oily liquid, making its lucid, metallic-looking materiality visible, which opens up references to silver photography.