Ivan Black (b. 1972) grew up in London and now lives and works in Pembrokeshire, West Wales. Black earned his BA in Fine Art from Middlesex Univeristy in Lopndon (1991). Black’s work has been exhibited at galleries and sculpture parks worldwide including the Peggy Guggenheim Museum, The Cass Foundation, Flowers East, Sculpture by the Sea Australia, Interart Sculpture Park Netherlands, Palmyra Sculpture Centre Mallorca, Kinetica museum and the Hannah Peschar Sculpture Garden. Notable solo exhibitions include ‘Invisible realm’, Lauren Baker Contemporary, London, UK (2018); ‘Sculpture by the sea’, Cottesloe, Western Australia (2016-2018); ‘Sculpture at the castle’ Manorbier, Wales (2016); ‘Vanishing Point’, Elephant Gallery, London, (2011); and ‘A Lightness of Touch’, Fold Gallery, Cumbria, (2006). Large scale commissions include ‘Diorama,’ Adobe, Salt Lake City, USA (2018); ‘Parabola’, Nobu Hotel, Portland Square, London, UK; ‘Kinetic Symmetry,’ Royal Botanic Gardens, Ontario, CA; and ‘Asklepian’, Addenbrookes Hospital, Cambridge, UK. Among his awards Black stands out for the Darc Magazine Ceiling, best decorative pendant/chandelier for ‘Nebula’ (2017); Cottesloe Acquisition Award for ‘Golden Section’ (2016).

Black’s kinetic sculpture practice takes formal inspiration from naturally occurring geometries which upon the introduction of energy via motor wind or audience power, perform perpetual mutations. Living and working in the wilds of Pembrokeshire, West Wales, Black’s work reflects a fascination and kinship with the mathematical patterns found everywhere in nature; the waves, leaves, shells, the human form. Sythinsizing science, art and technology, Black’s minimal mechanichal contemplations and interventions reveal how order silently governs our seemingly disorderly world. From helical to nebulous orchestrations, each work is a section of a potentially infinite sequence, generated by the application of Black’s systematic geometric rules. Black’s meticulously engineered and seamlessly integrated mechanisms are central to the biological behaviour of his works. The repetition of identical elements imbues his structures with an alluring fluidity. With a craftsmanship which disspates the focal point from any single conduit throughout a complex yet unified whole, motion itself takes center stage as subject.