The works in Stadium—pastel drawings, ceramic constructions, and found objects painted with ‘White Noise’—are a continuation of a project I have been engaged with since the late 1990s. This exhibition is anchored by a singular geometric focus: the dash, the circle, the stadium shape, and the arching stadium. 

The stadium shape, in particular, provides the conceptual fulcrum for the show with its roots in the Stadium Billiard Problem—a mathematical model in which a particle moves freely within a stadium-shaped enclosure, reflecting off the walls in a pattern that is both deterministic and chaotic embodying randomness within a rigid structure. This paradox of control and unpredictability resonates deeply with Penn's improvisational approach to making, where repetition and variation reveal a tension between order and disorder.

Penn's ongoing White Noise series engages with notions of transformation, temporality, and provisionality—qualities that also emerge from the dynamics of the Stadium Billiard Problem. Since moving to New Zealand, he has gathered discarded objects from pavements and beaches, painting them with my version of white noise. These objects, once functional, bear the traces of their past use—bent nails, peeling paint—marking their transition from utility to obsolescence. Through their recontextualisation, they become artefacts of impermanence, mirroring the cosmic cycle of formation and dissolution.

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