Camberwell College of Arts   2009/2010

Florian Roithmayr

Florian Roithmayr’s work often refers to manmade geometries as actualized testing-sites for abstract ideas. Methodologies become interesting when seen as tests for pragmatic solutions and applications: as room dividers, ceiling panels, wall tiles. He is interested in connections between materials, symbols and ideas from different contexts, which share intrinsic formal similarities, but pit their own ideological, material or symbolic value against one another. Most often, the solutions in his work can be experienced as questioning our negotiation of the ideologies and mythologies of our built surroundings as well as offering his own specific blueprint of the environment he finds himself in. Florian Roithmayr is currently researching our negotiation and interpretation of the cave as a spatial arrangement that is underneath or inside, while still connected to the outside or the above ground. His investigation is into the material fabric of both the naturally occurring cave formation and man made insertions, following the idea of the cave as a space of magical folklore (defying logic) and a space of man’s technical conquest (empirical). The opportunity to work at Camberwell College of Art will be a way to produce a new body of ceramic works that reflect this interest in spatial production of nature and culture. It will also facilitate the accumulation of different interpretations of a space like the cave as artist book publication.