CARTESIAN FIRE

CARTESIAN FIRE
BY
DAVID BUTTON

David Button moved to Berlin from New York in March of 2010. He works with an amalgamation of materials, employing building techniques from his background as a fabricator of art and architecture. Physically, his works may be considered to be playing with a controlled chaos, but conceptually the work taps into fundamental questions of how we construct our realities. Although Button is working in a multitude of mediums, similarities can certainly be seen in the ways he treats the materials of each project. There is always a combination of elements, at times in a very basic chemical sense, and diametrically opposite materials at others.

In the Oxidation Reduction works, Button is working with iron-based thermite in combination with a variety of materials. The works demonstrate a destructive property in the forces of nature, but also organic qualities found in inorganic architectural artifacts. Although Button is orchestrating the project, he admits that at a certain point he ceases to be in control and chance plays a dominant roll. Whether he is establishing a reference plane with commonly recognized geometry, or simply allowing a line to take its own course, the works have very distinct qualities of unpredictability and power.