Axel Vervoordt Gallery is pleased to present Otto Boll’s new solo exhibition, Space Walk, which covers the gallery’s entire 21st floor. With suspended, seemingly floating sculptures, Boll calls for interaction and dialogue with the works, which can only be experienced through examination, approach, repositioning, and a changed perspective. Boll’s creations oscillate between presence and absence, the seen and the unseen, suggesting both materiality and the void.

One determinant of my work is my discontent with the established visions on the world around; it cannot be possible, that what we see is all we can see and will see. A new vision cannot simply originate from things perceived, cannot be achieved just by the synthesis of values drawn from previous experience. I intend to search for what I hope to find: The visible not yet visible; spatial expansion of thought and feeling. (Otto Boll, 1988)

A void, be it an old stairwell or an industrial gallery space, is for Boll a beginning. “There is nothing and from this point, you have to start anew,” he says. It is like a search for the unknown or travelling to a new destination. Something emerges from the void, which was previously only in the artist’s mind.

From past training as a glider pilot, since the 1970s Boll has been keenly interested in perceptions, in a complete image of something that can only be gotten through renewed attention and through sharing space and time. The tranquil interplay of lines with which Boll fills the gallery can be considered only this way – as a sculptural event to which he invites us. It is rarely clear exactly where the lines made of aluminium and steel begin or end, only the approach can help in understanding. “Only their proximity can bring about a pristine experience,” says Boll. Most of these sculptures are untitled; some are called “Helix”, referring to the shape of a snail’s shell that also characterises the works, but also to the spiral that follows the pattern of the viewer’s thoughts.

Gallery address: 21/F, Coda Designer Centre , 62 Wong Chuk Hang Road