On Saturday 10 November 2007, on the occasion of Turin’s art night, the exhibition of work by the British artist Paul Fryer In Loving Memory opens at the Guido Costa Projects gallery from 8.30 p.m. to midnight.

This show, realised in conjunction with Reconstruction, features a single artwork, Martyr, created specifically for the Turin gallery. This large scale piece is impeccably fabricated, and represents the synthesis of Paul Fryer’s poetic and expressive research into the origins of technology and the labyrinths of science. The actual elements used to construct the artwork – stainless steel, wax and glass – testify to this synthesis. The diametrically opposed materials, pregnant with historical significance and charge, give the resulting work a monumental feeling, at once tender and violent, romantic and mathematical. The origins of the work are bound up in an event which made news at the end of the 19th century, when such contradictions were not uncommon in the nascent scientific world. Science then was still mysterious and arcane; it’s influence spread through the civilised world providing glimmers of understanding and symbolic representations of a progressive future, an as yet unachieved perfection. The star of the piece is an unknown Western Union lineman, John Feeks, employed alongside others to hang the thousands of kilometres of wire connecting one building to another and providing the city of New York with electricity and information. The grotesque death of this unfortunate lineman, who died in a tangle of cables above the Manhattan streets became a brutal symbol of the perils of technological advancement. John Feeks was at the time the most famous of the martyrs of progress, and one of the most famous victims of the electromechanical revolution at the end of the 19th century. Paul Fryer’s work is a sort of modern monument to those forgotten workers and their behind-the-scenes contribution to supplying the electricity to power modernity. Martyr is a highly evocative work, poised between classical sculpture and high technology, and as such fits perfectly into the British artistic tradition that is so good at renewing itself with radical force, while still dialoguing with its great predecessors, ranging from Mark Wallinger to Damien Hirst. The Paul Fryer exhibition ideally completes the gallery’s two-year research into the most innovative and heretic figures in contemporary sculpture. Our exploration has included exhibitions of large artworks by Paul Etienne Lincoln, Martin Kersels and Robert Kusmirowski. In Loving Memory will be on show to the public during gallery opening hours until 31 January. The catalogue is available from the gallery.

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Paul Fryer (Leeds, 1963), is a multifaceted artist, capable of producing brilliant results in a broad range of expressive disciplines spanning sculpture, painting and installations. He has been active artistically for many years, experimenting with different languages. He made a radical debut on the international scene in the early 80s with his performances and with his electronic music. He has exhibited in galleries and museums in Europe and the United States. Paul Fryer is represented by Reconstruction in London, the Julius Werner gallery in Berlin and Guido Costa Projects in Torino. This is his first one-man exhibition in Italy.