Housed in a giant cage like a wild, unpredictable experiment, The End of the Particular (Perpetual Light I) has an inherent sense of danger; the laboratory result of Conrad Shawcross’s anorak enthusiasm for science.
Comprised of an articulated arm, with a single light bulb at the end it rotates at a speed of 200rpm, creating a ‘magical’ hovering shape. It’s Conrad Shawcross’s larger than life diagram of String Theory, the floating illusion descriptive of the concept that matter is actually made up of continuous loops of energy, not individual particles.
The blinding light line fluctuates at the precise degrees of a harmonic octave, like the graphic ‘waves’ seen on the visual output monitor of a stereo.
Displayed in a darkened gallery, the device works as a giant drawing machine, blasting it’s luminous patterns through the wire grid onto the walls, leaving the viewer seeing spots, like from staring into the sun. Conrad Shawcross isn’t making paintings on canvas, but rather through mechanical invention, he’s imprinting his image directly into the eye.