Summary
AnOther Magazine collaborated with Turner prize-winning artist Keith Tyson on a project that focused on his Nature series paintings, which are created by the pouring of paint and chemicals onto a surface. These works explore ideas of chance and control, and we decided to play on those themes by zooming in, cropping and blowing up each piece into new forms – sculpting them according to our point of view. Below is an extract from the Louis Vuitton art talk between Tim Marlow and Tyson that took place at the Hayward Gallery this summer, where he gave the audience a fascinating insight into the origins of his obsession with control.
Keith Tyson: It's been well documented that I've had an interest in gambling: I was addicted for a long time. And that experience was about this condition that we all exist in, which is before an event, any particular thing could happen – there’s potential.
When you have a blank piece of paper in the studio it could end up being anything. Of course, when the thing is finished, all that potential is killed off, but you have the pleasure and lack of anxiety as the result.
There’s no such thing as random; there’s just unpredictable processes. Everything is determined, it's just that there are very complicated systems at play that we tend to cancel out as human beings. So when I use randomness I tend to be hinting that there are other things going on outside the frame, or that there are other processes. It’s like an abstract painting – if I hit you over the head with it, it still hurts, it's not so abstract then!
Everything is embodied in a really complicated system and to know why a work comes into being you really have to understand the history of the entire universe. It really does get down to that in the end.
