Ivan Black (b. 1972) grew up in London and now lives and works in Pembrokeshire, west Wales. Black is an award-winning kinetic sculptor, celebrated for the striking interaction between art, science and technology. Black’s work reflects a fascination and kinship with the mathematics of all organic life. Inspired by iconic natural geometry, he draws on the organising patterns found across nature - from plants, weather systems, the human body, through to the cosmos.

Black’s work has been exhibited at galleries and sculpture parks worldwide including the Peggy Guggenheim Museum, The Cass Foundation, Flowers East, Sculpture by the Sea Australia, Interart Sculpture Park Netherlands, Palmyra Sculpture Centre Mallorca, Kinetica museum and the Hannah Peschar Sculpture Garden. Large scale commissions include ‘Diorama,’ Adobe, Salt Lake City, USA (2018); ‘Parabola’, Nobu Hotel, Portland Square, London, UK; ‘Kinetic Symmetry,’ Royal Botanic Gardens, Ontario, CA; and ‘Asklepian’, Addenbrookes Hospital, Cambridge, UK. Among his awards are the Darc Magazine Awards for ‘Nebula’ (2017); Cottesloe Acquisition Award for ‘Golden Section’ (2016).

Distilling and counterbalancing elements of earth, sky and body, weight and lightness, precariousness and equilibrium — Black’s work reveals the interconnectedness of all living things and how order can silently govern our seemingly disordered world. Tending towards the minimalist in design, movement takes centre stage.  Black’s interest in sculpture began at an early age and motion quickly became central to his work, adding as he saw it another layer of complexity and engagement to his experiments. An inherent problem solver, he spent his early years amassing multi-disciplinary skills in the pursuit of the means to realise his ideas.

A finely balanced fusion of industrial, artistic and technological, Black builds complex fluid structures that mutate upon the introduction of energy. Creating a spirited, synergistic environment, the works invite us to interact with them. Energy is imparted to the works by wind, motor or manually by the viewer. Setting off mesmerising states of interplay and metamorphosis, the works are characterised by shifting patterns of motion, from fluid to highly organised, undulating and multi-sectioned.

Black earned his BA in Fine Art from Middlesex University in London (1991).