Alessandro Albanese is pleased to present Burners, a solo exhibition by Toby Christian.
This large-scale installation includes a series of new stone carvings made by the artist during
the inaugural Matera Residency, 2019. Alluding to provisional, untraceable and disposable
mobile phone devices, the title of the exhibition echoes the dual senses of innovation and
redundancy which pervade the exhibition.
Toby Christian’s multifaceted practice incorporates a wide range of media including
writing, installation, sculpture, painting and animation. Using text within an expanded
sculptural field, he writes in an attempt to describe objects he sees, visits and collects -
from rare museological artefacts to more quotidian, disposable items. Sculptural and
wall-mounted works are produced episodically, made in relation to and stemming from

his ongoing writing. Constellating around his detailed written descriptions are palimpsest-
records of objects and bodies, plans and models for made-up places, contorting

typographical characters and prototyped forms for living and working.
The small-scale marble sculptures of Burners speculate on the formal lineage of computer
mice. Conserving, imagining and remodelling forms, these sculptures equivocally and
simultaneously draw from the formal languages of modernist sculpture and contemporary
technological hardware, with numerous anachronistic effects and surreal allusions to other
objects. Whilst their varying ergonomic registers might suggest the advancing accommodation
of a labouring hand through time, they also imply a less plausible string of images, where a
hammer might lead to a diamond, or knight’s armour to a dough ball.
Shown within the display apparatus of polling booths dating from political elections of the
1960s onwards, the pristine, porous marble sculptures are housed in collapsible
compartments which lend privacy to each encounter. The booths are covered in a patina of
grease, graphite and graffiti. Inside, clusters of hesitant pencil marks, made prior to voting,
surround occasional exclamations and messages for future voters. Outside, the booths display
more disparate endorsements, where the commanding stamps of royal insignia
and industrial makers marks appear alongside smiling cats and floating monsters.
A text by George Vasey will accompany a forthcoming illustrated publication about
this exhibition.
Toby Christian (b.1983, Boston, Lincolnshire) lives and works in London. Recent solo exhibitions
and performances include Old School New Body, Celine, Glasgow (2019), Trippy Scroller,
PEER, London (2018), The News, Swimming Pool, Sofia, curated by David Dale, Glasgow (2017)
and Railing, Whitechapel Gallery, London (2017). His forthcoming book will
be published in 2020 by Koenig Books, who also published his previous books Collar (2017)
and Measures (2015). Christian graduated from the Royal Academy Schools, London, and
was awarded the Gold Medal.