SALISBURY.- The New Art Centre presenting its first exhibition of new sculptures by Toby Ziegler (b. 1972), which is being shown in the gallery and Sculpture Park concurrently with the display of Bridget Riley’s painting in the Orangery. Both artists share an interest in perception, which for Ziegler involves the ways in which we receive, transfer and lose information.

Ziegler’s sculpture has been described by Penelope Curtis as ‘very whole and very empty’. Hence the new sculptures for this exhibition are made from the thinnest possible aluminium sheets and approximate aspects of the human form – heads, bodies and limbs – and they look almost pneumatic, as if they have been inflated and might possibly float away. Their apparent physical lightness is enhanced by their shiny, multi-faceted surfaces which catch and reflect light from every angle, making them appear barely there. These are counteracted by crushed versions of the ‘inflated’ sculptures, crumpled by the artist so that their original form has all but gone and which brings them back down to earth. These pairs of sculptures are being shown inside and outside, divided by the glass façade of the gallery at Roche Court.

Ziegler has long been captivated by our relationship with objects and his sculpture has referred to a variety of different sources from Parthenon figures and the Pyramids to Rodin and Staffordshire porcelain dogs, which he locates in photographs, prints and book illustrations. His process then involves using computer software to transform the original flat image into a faceted three dimensional object made from a series of polygons. Ziegler reimagines three dimensions out of two and reconstructs something of the original form. In doing so he opens up the boundaries between sculptural and pictorial practice, exploring what is lost in translation in the shift from one to the other, and also what is gained.

Toby Ziegler’s will have a major exhibition at The Hepworth Wakefield from 26 September 2014 which will include many of the sculptures shown at Roche Court. He has participated in numerous solo and group exhibitions including the Museum of Contemporary Art Kiasma, Helsinki; Minsheng Art Museum, Shanghai; The State Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg; The Saatchi Gallery, London; Malmö Konsthall and Tate Britain. His work also features in important public and private collections around the world.