Elias Sime’s large-scale abstractions are made from thousands of electrical wires, type keys, microchips, and computer hardware components. His focus on electronic materials began approximately ten years ago, out of a long career working with assemblage art and architectural installations in Ethiopia, his home country. The artist incorporates obsolete technological equipment as a natural extension of his materially-driven practice, utilising castaway objects that surround daily life. The new compositions made for The Milk of Dreams (titled Red Leaves; two Veiled Whispers; all 2021) look like offspring of abstract colourfield painting, but incorporate technophilic materials, with pink, green, and purple colours one might find in a box of old cords. Sime’s use of colour, pattern, and grids often reference landscapes as seen from a plane or satellite, evoking natural vistas imprinted by human labour and advancement. Aligned with his foray into an array of electronic materials is Sime’s research into ancient Ethiopian carving, weaving, and building rituals, desiring to connect a long lineage of oral history and vernacular techniques with contemporary mass- produced objects. He exhibits decades of technical training and attention to pattern and colour, with subtle suggestions of figuration or realism that bring hundreds of people’s, including the viewer’s, life cycles into the picture.
Ian Wallace
