
Sandra Peters: Pandoras Box (installation view)
Photo: Rebecca PittamSandra Peters: Pandora's Box
This exhibition marks the premiere of a new body of work by NYUAD faculty member Sandra Peters. The artist was inspired by the architecture of Rudolph Schindler whose work eventually led her in to a deep study of the geometric permutations of a cube.
Pandora’s Box includes a series of eleven uniquely unfolded aluminum cube sculptures and a wall mural spanning 4.4 meters. Ten of the eleven sculptures are identical in color. The eleventh, Pandora’s box, is an inviting silver. Peters’ use of mathematical imagining, abstract geometry and simplicity of form generates a minimalist effect. The link between each work in the exhibition reiterates Peters’ almost obsessive and calculated patterns, with each cube being a transformation of another, and the mural being an unfolded execution of the silver Pandora’s box.
An added pattern emerges within the painted mural: the eleven unfolding executions found in each of sculptures in the show. In a kind of mathematical fantasy these modular forms, in turn, can fit together, puzzle-like, to make a single, large, hypothetical cube that the artist invites the viewer to imagine. Thus, the mural, in two dimensions, embodies a map for a three-dimensional sculpture.
Throughout the exhibition period, Peters will change both the placement and the orientation of the cubes in the space, turning the cubes into as Peters says, “nomadic objects that travel.” The artist clearly calculated every aspect of this exhibit, and at first glance it may seem rigid, yet once visited and experienced, the show demonstrates, in the end, a genuine fluidity and ability to change.
— Bana Kattan, Assistant Curator, NYUAD Arts Gallery
To view a time-lapse of the making of the Untitled mural, please go to: https://vimeo.com/153087852
Exhibition Hours
Open daily from 3pm-10pm, closed Friday.
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Opening Reception:
January 28th, 5:30pm-7:00pm
Artists
Sandra Peters
Sandra Peters is a visual artist based in Abu Dhabi and Berlin. Peters works with objects and materials that emerge from her engagement with the architecture that surrounds her. She has had a number of solo and group shows in Germany and abroad. Peters was a visiting artist at the Art Center College of Design and at CalArts. Since 2014, she is Assistant Professor in Visual Arts at NYU Abu Dhabi.