Charles Sandison: Sings of Life

Charles Sandison (b. 1969) is known as a digital poet. His computer-generated software installations project text onto building facades or interiors. Symbols, words, and figures entwine and interact, coalescing into various formations, and creating concrete images.

In a state of existential reflection, Sandison examines the signs that surround us, and which will continue long after our death. In the resulting images, a stream of signs can be distinguished within the art historical symbols they compose, such as skulls and floral arrangements. The images’ references to still-life painting traditions contain subtle reminders of the transience of life. The artist’s interest towards signs - those that are manmade and those of computer technology systems - are intertwined.

Sandison confronts the differences between public and private spatiality via dichotomy. He oversees the installations’ placement in the gallery to make a comparison with their more intimate domestic environments, striving to create a dialogue between the viewer and the installation arising from the point of observation. Furthermore, the traditional concept of art spectatorship is shattered when a site-specific work is reflected upon the gallery’s ceiling, floor, and walls.

Scottish-born Sandison graduated with an MA from Glasgow Art School in 1993 and his installations can be seen in public places all over the world. He was awarded the Ars Fennica award in 2010 for the installation Language as a mirror of the world. Sandison’s work can be found in both domestic and international museum collections, such as the Museum of Contemporary Art Kiasma in Helsinki, the Bonn Art Museum, the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia in Madrid, the Musée d’Art Moderne in Luxembourg, as well as the Denver Art Museum in Colorado. Sandison lives and works in Tampere, Finland.