Harrison Pearce b. 1986, London (UK) | Lives and works in London (UK)

Harrison Pearce makes sculptural work that is an existential paradox. Using analytic philosophy as his cipher, Pearce traces the evolution of the human body and its ideological representation in a technophilic society that invents ever-newer ways of probing, prodding, unpicking and deconstructing it through an unwavering belief in empirical knowledge. 

Pneumatic body parts and supersized medical models characterize Pearce’s kinetic installations, which seem to exist in their own arcane knowledge systems. Simultaneously futuristic and mystical, the mechanized sculptures are caught somewhere between a time-traveling mad scientist’s lair and a sci-fi dystopia: it’s difficult to tell where the fantasy rests and “truth” takes over. Pearce’s interests lie in the representation of reality and our collective efforts to define it. 

To produce this work the artist sat in on brain surgery procedures and visited dry cleaning factories. But Pearce’s desire to unpick the aesthetics of techno-scientific logic stems from his own experience with science’s fallibility: a brain scan that suggested the artist had 6 months left to live turned out to be false data. What realities are precluded by our unflinching commitment to scientific knowledge as singular truth? What other knowledge systems, and indeed, ways of existing, are possible? 

The artist lives and works in London, UK.