Dark Matter by artist trio Troika premiered at Art Basel in Basel 2014 Unlimited. The sculpture explores the dynamics of perception and reality by appearing as a perfect circle, a hexagon and a square depending on the viewer’s position which choreographs and abstracts the geometric structures that form Dark Matter.

A mysterious, suspended black entity, Troika’s work poses questions about the nature of knowlege and reminds us that reality / our render is subjective, which questions how we approach the world surrounding us.

The work can be seen in this video, along with a brief interview with the three members of Troika – Conny Freyer, Eva Rucki and Sebastien Noel, who talk about the ideas behind their latest work.

Troika: Dark Matter (2014). Gallery OMR in collaboration with Kohn Gallery, Los Angeles at Art Basel in Basel 2014, Unlimited sector. Interview with Conny Freyer, Eva Rucki, and Sebastien Noel (Troika), June 18, 2014.

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From the press text:

Dark Matter is a ‘triple point’ invested with a physical form; a moment in which seemingly antithetical forms can coexist. With this sculp- ture Troika continues to explore the dynamics of perception and reality, space and object, asking the question why we know what we know, and whether this knowledge is certain.
Dark Matter implies that subjective experiences can be true, but all such experience is inher- ently limited due to its failure to account for a total truth. It suggests that just as different maps can give accounts of the same territory, so can different forms of knowledge give a more holistic image about the material world, all the while asking the question what dictates how we determine knowledge in the first place.
The volume displays to the viewer a shifting reality: first, one sees a perfect flat circle, and then a hexagon followed by a perfect square. Unable to grasp the full nature of the object, one can never see all of the three ‘states’ at once, while being challenged to accept the seemingly impossible.