Troika’s progression of black ink works, ‘Small Bangs’, ‘Drawing Together, Drawing Apart’ (2015), ‘Horizons’ (2015) and the video installation Time only exists so not everything happens at once (2014), are an examination of how the same gesture can provoke opposing effects. Drawing on Troika’s interest in the generative potential of control, the various works reflect on difference and distance, constraint and release, unpredictability and harmony.
The ‘Small Bangs’ are made applying water to black ink until the black disappears. The artworks are therefore not what they seem: they are both the various colours that constitute the absolute black and the separated colours of its intrinsic makeup. The title ‘Small Bang’ is an allusion to the fundamental origins of the universe, and the fact that all matter was created from darkness. In 2014, the works on paper developed into Troika’s first video-based work to date, ‘Time only exists so that not everything happens at once’.