Boris Tellegen, Delta — Surface — Backslash Gallery — Exhibition — Slash Paris

Past: September 13 → November 3, 2012

Backslash is proud to announce Surface, the first solo show by Dutch artist Boris Tellegen—better known by his Delta tag—to be held at the gallery. His installations or his wood and paper collages take the visitor on a journey into a constructed universe where the intersection between the real and the conceptual is anchored in a geometrical style based on reversed perspectives.

During the 1980s, Delta spent much of his time deconstructing and reforming the letters of his tag, working with the rigor forged during his time as an engineering student. His fractured lettering pointed towards a future governed by the dual notions of phony chaos within controlled order. The artist explains:

“My work is about chaos in order, or the order in chaos. Random logic maybe… (…) An important part is trying to find good constraints. A set of borders to work within, and which gives you the need to go deeper instead of wider. The more freedom, the less need to stain your brain.”

Boris Tellegen soon abandoned the streets, the setting for his first works, in favor of the enclosed universe of the exhibition space. Words became his surface and letters faded from view in favor of direction and material in works where light plays across the dimensions to offer new readings of his intricate reliefs.

The surface describes the exterior, or visible, portion of something. In mathematics, to calculate a surface is to assign a measurable quantity, a scope. Boris Tellegen seeks to go deeper, to move beyond this concept, peeling away the surface to find what lies hidden beneath.