Zac Langdon-Pole

Zac Langdon-Pole / Aotearoa New Zealand, b.1988 / Installation view of The Dog God Cycle 2022 / Recombined jigsaw puzzles: NASA, ESA, CSA, and STScI, Pillars of Creation (1995/2014); John Constable, Cloud Study (1822) / 301 x 393 x 4cm / © Zac Langdon-Pole / Image courtesy: The artist / View full image
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Zac Langdon Pole / Photograph: Chris Traill / Image courtesy: Michael Lett Gallery
Zac Langdon-Pole is interested in re-contextualising how certain histories, materials, people and processes shape our understandings of the world. Working primarily with collage and assemblage, many of Langdon-Pole’s constructions juxtapose materials, textures, objects and histories that seem to have come from very different places.
For the Asia Pacific Triennial, Langdon-Pole presents three bodies of work, including a group of compelling jigsaw paintings inspired by the ways our prior experience colours our interpretation of Rorschach ink-blot tests. Bringing together two very different images, these carefully recombined puzzles create a third, more abstracted image — or ghost stencil — with its own meaning and purpose.
Centred amongst the almost kaleidoscopic colours are five marble sculptures. These are actual-size reproductions of iconic sculptures from the history of European art, but with their human figures excluded, presenting a ‘memory garden’ of human absence.