Yuri Pattison: Free Traveller, Cell Project Space

London and Berlin based artist Yuri Pattison combines his fine art and technological background to explore the idea of virtual and physical spaces, and what lies between. This idea of parallelism is central to Pattison’s wider interests as an artist. He often uses collage to trace analogies between disparate events and occurrences. 

In ‘Free Traveller’ Pattison moves to examine parallel worlds through the metaphor of the desert island, encountered in traditional travelogues. From Robinson Crusoe and early colonial castaway narratives to later science fiction, the idea of the lone traveller on a remote island raises the intriguing possibility of utopia. Furthermore, it provides a useful route into Pattison’s idea of the internet as a separate world.

The exhibition consists of a combination of video work and sculpture, as well as a new digital work which will exist online for the duration of the show. We recommend leaving plenty of time to appreciate his new video work, which will be watched over by Aibo, a Sony robot specially programmed by Pattison. The film, which revisits Pattison’s distinctive interest in montage, includes the artist’s own handheld camera footage taken from his visit to the Tropical Islands Resort, an artificial island retreat sixty kilometres from Berlin.

Pattison’s work is unique in its exploration of our relationship with digital culture, and this show marks an important milestone in his genesis as one of internet age’s most important young artists.