Sculpture 2013 01-02

sculpture
January/February 2013
Vol. 32 No. 1
A publication of the
International Sculpture Center
www.sculpture.org
Sudarshan Shetty
Piero Gilardi
Winifred Lutz
Vibha Galhotra
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THE WORLDS NEWSSTAND
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E.V. DAY
Pollinator (Water Lily)
36 x 36
Polished Aluminum
2012
Photo by Jacob Sterenberg
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What an exciting year 2013 will be for the International Sculpture
Center. One of the most exciting events of the year is just around the
corner. If you havent already made your plans, consider attending
the ISCs New Zealand Symposium, February 1115th. There will be
plenty of activities, including panel discussions, private tours of collec-
tors homes, exclusive visits to sculpture parks, and several optional
activities.
Through ISConnects in 2013, we will continue to bring our organiza-
tion together with other groups and institutions around the world to
explore original ideas on contemporary sculpture. This year launches
the third year of the successful and engaging ISConnects series and
will see more events in more places.
This year will also provide many opportunities to recognize out-
standing achievements in sculpture. Later this year, the ISC will be
honoring an outstanding patron and educator, and a jury will be choos-
ing another set of talented emerging students for the Outstanding
Student Achievement in Contemporary Sculpture Award. The recipient
of our Lifetime Achievement in Contemporary Sculpture Award will
also be announced later this year. While the date for the Lifetime
Achievement gala has not been established, we do know that we will
be recognizing another sculptor for his or her exemplary contributions
to the field. Candidates for the award are masters of sculptural
processes and techniques who have devoted their careers to the devel-
opment of a laudable body of sculptural work, as well as to the advance-
ment of the sculpture field as a whole.
The ISC has many other exciting activities planned, including more
content in Sculpture magazine, more Web updates, an ISC blog in mul-
tiple languages, and the publication of the fifth book for ISC Press, on
alternative approaches to public art.
We are fortunate to have great volunteers, staff, and Board mem-
bers to carry out the work of the ISC as we enter the fourth year of
our strategic plan. If you havent already done so, its not too late to
contribute to our Annual Appeal to support the great programs and
the work of the ISC.
On behalf of the staff and Board of the ISC, best wishes for a great
and fun-filled 2013.
Marc LeBaron
Chairman, ISC Board of Trustees
From the Chairman
4 Sculpture 32.1
ISC Board of Trustees
Chairman: Marc LeBaron, Lincoln, NE
Chakaia Booker, New York, NY
Robert Edwards, Naples, FL
Ralfonso Gschwend, Switzerland
Carla Hanzal, Charlotte, NC
Paul Hubbard, Philadelphia, PA
Ree Kaneko, Omaha, NE
Gertrud Kohler-Aeschlimann, Switzerland
Mark Lyman, Sawyer, MI
Creighton Michael, Mt. Kisco, NY
Deedee Morrison, Birmingham, AL
Prescott Muir, Salt Lake City, UT
George W. Neubert, Brownville, NE
F. Douglass Schatz, Potsdam, NY
Boaz Vaadia, New York, NY
Philipp von Matt, Germany
Chairmen Emeriti: Robert Duncan, Lincoln, NE
John Henry, Chattanooga, TN
Peter Hobart, Italy
Josh Kanter, Salt Lake City, UT
Robert Vogele, Hinsdale, IL
Founder: Elden Tefft, Lawrence, KS
Lifetime Achievement in
Contemporary Sculpture Recipients
Magdalena Abakanowicz
Fletcher Benton
Fernando Botero
Louise Bourgeois
Anthony Caro
Elizabeth Catlett
John Chamberlain
Eduardo Chillida
Christo & Jeanne-Claude
Mark di Suvero
Richard Hunt
Phillip King
William King
Manuel Neri
Claes Oldenburg & Coosje van Bruggen
Nam June Paik
Arnaldo Pomodoro
Gi Pomodoro
Robert Rauschenberg
George Rickey
George Segal
Kenneth Snelson
Frank Stella
William Tucker
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Departments
16 Itinerary
22 Commissions
24 Forum: Aucklands headland Sculpture
on the Gulf
by Robin Woodward
80 ISC News
Reviews
67 New York: Bharti Kher
68 San Francisco: David Hare
69 Boston: Nancy Selvage
70 Lincoln, Massachusetts: Julianne Swartz
71 New York: John Chamberlain
71 New York: Kevin Francis Gray
72 New York: Eve Ingalls
73 New York: Chiharu Shiota
74 New York: Richard Van Buren
75 New York: 2012 Whitney Biennial
76 Pittsburgh: Cathy Wilkes
77 Montreal: Laura Santini
77 Oshawa, Canada: Micah Lexier and Kelly Mark
78 New Delhi: Jitish Kallat
79 Tel Aviv: Roundabout
On the Cover: Sudarshan Shetty, Untitled, from
this too shall pass, 2010. Carved wood, electro-
magnetic mechanism, steel sword, and steel, 354
x 278 x 106 cm. Photo: Courtesy GALLERYSKE.
Features
26 Sudarshan Shetty: Futility and Enchantment by Chitra Balasubramaniam
32 Vibha Galhotra: Hidden in Plain Sight by Susan Canning
38 Artistic and Social Renewal: A Conversation with Piero Gilardi by Andrea Bellini
42 Place as a Condition of Time: A Conversation with Winifred Lutz by Stacy Levy
48 David Hendersons Soaring Space by Brooke Kamin Rapaport
52 Trndur Patursson: Inspired by the Faroe Islands by Christine Temin
56 Zeke Moores: Turning Dross to Gold by Craig Francis Power
42
sculpture
January/February 2013
Vol. 32 No. 1
A publication of the
38
Sculpture January/February 2013 5
74
48
32
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S CUL PT URE MAGAZ I NE
Editor Glenn Harper
Managing Editor Twylene Moyer
Editorial Assistants Elena Goukassian, Amanda Hickok
Design Eileen Schramm visual communication
Advertising Sales Manager Brenden OHanlon
Contributing Editors Maria Carolina Baulo (Buenos
Aires), Roger Boyce (Christchurch), Susan Canning (New
York), Marty Carlock (Boston), Jan Garden Castro (New
York), Collette Chattopadhyay (Los Angeles), Ina Cole
(London), Ana Finel Honigman (Berlin), John K. Grande
(Montreal), Kay Itoi (Tokyo), Matthew Kangas (Seattle),
Zoe Kosmidou (Athens), Angela Levine (Tel Aviv), Brian
McAvera (Belfast), Robert C. Morgan (New York), Robert
Preece (Rotterdam), Brooke Kamin Rapaport (New
York), Ken Scarlett (Melbourne), Peter Selz (Berkeley),
Sarah Tanguy (Washington), Laura Tansini (Rome)
Each issue of Sculpture is indexed in The Art Index and
the Bibliography of the History of Art (BHA).
isc
Benefactors Circle ($100,000+)
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I NT E RNAT I ONAL SCUL PT URE CE NT E R CONT E MPORARY SCUL PT URE CI RCL E
The International Sculpture Center is a 501(c)3 nonprofit organization
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sponsorships, and memberships.
The ISC Board of Trustees gratefully acknowledges the generosity of our
members and donors in our Contemporary Sculpture Circle: those who have
contributed $350 and above.
I NT E RNAT I ONAL S CUL PT URE CE NT E R
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Major Donors ($50,00099,999)
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Nadine Witkin, Estate of Isaac Witkin
Mary & John Young
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About the ISC
The International Sculpture Center is a member-supported, nonprofit organization
founded in 1960 to champion the creation and understanding of sculpture and
its unique and vital contribution to society. The mission of the ISC is to expand
public understanding and appreciation of sculpture internationally, demonstrate
the power of sculpture to educate and effect social change, engage artists and
arts professionals in a dialogue to advance the art form, and promote a support-
ive environment for sculpture and sculptors. The ISC values: our constituents
Sculptors, Institutions, and Patrons; dialogueas the catalyst to innovation and
understanding; educationas fundamental to personal, professional, and soci-
etal growth; and communityas a place for encouragement and opportunity.
Membership
ISC membership includes subscriptions to Sculpture and Insider; access to
International Sculpture Conferences; free registration in Portfolio, the ISCs
on-line sculpture registry; and discounts on publications, supplies, and services.
International Sculpture Conferences
The ISCs International Sculpture Conferences gather sculpture enthusiasts
from all over the world to network and dialogue about technical, aesthetic,
and professional issues.
Sculpture Magazine
Published 10 times per year, Sculpture is dedicated to all forms of contemporary
sculpture. The members edition includes the Insider newsletter, which contains
timely information on professional opportunities for sculptors, as well as a list
of recent public art commissions and announcements of members accomplish-
ments.
www.sculpture.org
The ISCs award-winning Web site <www.sculpture.org> is the most comprehensive
resource for information on sculpture. It features Portfolio, an on-line slide
registry and referral system providing detailed information about artists and their
work to buyers and exhibitors; the Sculpture Parks and Gardens Directory, with
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newsletter and extensive information about the world of sculpture.
Education Programs and Special Events
ISC programs include the Outstanding Sculpture Educator Award, the Outstanding
Student Achievement in Contemporary Sculpture Awards, and the Lifetime
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include opportunities for viewing art and for meeting colleagues in the field.
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The ISCs publications
are supported in part
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This program is made possible in
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of State, a Partner Agency of the
National Endowment for the Arts.
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16 Sculpture 32.1
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Contemporary Art Museum
|c|e||, |c||| tc|c||nc
Angel Otero
||co| |e||oc|, !, .o:,
For Otero, oil paint is a sculptural
material, capable of taking on form
and mass. His paintings throw
off the trappings of conventional
process from the start. He covers
glass with multiple layers of color
(in reverse order), allows them to
partially dry, then scrapes off the
entire built-up composition and
transfers it to canvas, where it takes
on a life of its own as material. In
addition to oil skins that can stretch,
fold, and wrinkle into complex sur-
faces (deep relief and fully dimen-
sional), he molds drying paint like
clay and salvages desiccated scrap-
ings as ready-made fragments. All
of these elements find their way
into sculptural assemblages, where
they combine with porcelain, iron,
found items, and furniture to create
distinctive objects and installations
that fuse rebellious improvisation
and discovery with memory and the
remnants of tradition.
Tel: 919.513.0946
Web site <www.camraleigh.org>
Dallas Museum of Art
|c||c
Karla Black
||co| |c|:| :,, .o:,
Black describes her work as almost
painting, performance, or installa-
tion while actually, and quite defi-
nitely, being sculpture. Ephemeral,
floor-based pieces and remarkable
hanging sculptures appear untouch-
ably fragile, exuding a vulnerable
and provocative beauty that masks
a serious dialogue with nature and
culture. In addition to addressing
developmental experience, complete
with sensory recollections awakened
through powder paint, crushed
chalk, and sugar paper, her work slyly
alludes to tired associations with
the feminine. Lipstick, nail varnish,
self-tanners, and other tools of
enhancement (some permanently
wet and festering) interrupt other-
wise clean surfaces, but their role
extends beyond critique. For this
show, she has made two new instal-
lations of commanding scale and
presence that defy metaphor while
summoning an almost endless suc-
cession of associations.
Tel: 214.922.1200
Web site
<http://dallasmuseumofart.org>
Galleria Civica dArte Moderna
e Contemporanea
o||n
Salvatore Scarpitta
||co| |e||oc|, ,, .o:,
Scarpitta, dubbed the outlaw of art
and racing, turned his love of speed
into an art form. Vehicles of all types
dominate his work, from reconstruct-
ed racing cars (built for use as
well as display) to primitive sleds,
which he began to produce in 1974.
His interest in automotive power
reached its peak that same year with
|,n\, a rebuilt Italian World War II
armored desert reconnaissance
vehicle. Strapped to the floor, cannon
sealed, and sides flanked by Red
Cross awnings (each filled with
a pool of water), the tank retools
aggression into pacificationa recur-
ring theme in Scarpittas work,
which seems to seek a redemptive,
counter-mythology on the order of
Beuys, an apologia for succumbing
to the allure of beastly machines.
This retrospective, which focuses on
works from the 50s and 60s, reveals
an artist of wide-ranging technical
and formal experimentation, willing
to archaize modernity and blur indus-
trial precision with handcraft, found
components, and organic materials
to create vehicles of imaginative
adventuring.
Tel: + 39 011 4429518
Web site <www.gamtorino.it>
itinerary
Left: Angel Otero, work-in-progress for CAM Raleigh. Bottom left: Karla
Black, Necessity. Above: Salvatore Scarpitta, Kite for Invasion.
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Guggenheim Bilbao
3|||cc
Claes Oldenburg
||co| |e||oc|, :,, .o:,
Over the course of a long solo and
collaborative career, Oldenburg rede-
fined the concept of sculpture, dis-
rupting expectations of how ordinary
objects behave. His work seems to
speak a clear language of the every-
day and commonplace, but behind
the faade of familiarity lies a subver-
sive urge to disrupt the commodity
and reveal its strangeness as a sym-
bol of imagination, desire, and obses-
sion. This show, which highlights
the metamorphic heart of his
ground-breaking early work from the
1960s, features a plethora of trans-
mogrified items, from a biomorphic
ray gun to home dcor staples, in
addition to rarely seen film footage.
It also offers an unprecedented gath-
ering of key elements from |e ||ee|
and |e |c|e, landmark temporary
installations that plunged viewers
into the role of protagonists querying
their own behavior in the face of
urban encounter and commerce. The
|coe |oeom, a walk-in collection
of 385 souvenirs, bits of kitsch, and
studio models, doubles as a window
into the artists mind, where the
detritus of capitalist culture washes
up in all its incredible variety and
mystery.
Tel: + 34 944 35 90 80
Web site
<www.guggenheim-bilbao.es>
Hamburger Kunsthalle
|cm|o|
Annette Wehrmann
||co| |c|:| ,, .o:,
Beginning with performance-attacks
on Hamburgs flower-boxes and
continuing until her death in 2010,
Wehrmann was a leading partici-
pant in Europes renewed politiciza-
tion of art. Somewhere between
sculpture and intervention, her work
drew on conceptual and action
art, as well as the language of the
Situationist International. Using
ephemeral and cheap materials, she
explored tension-fraught issues such
as economic justice, religion, the
media, and the inequities of urban
life. In 0|| oe 6een (||c:e c|
0c|||cn), she sought out empty
spaces within the public realm that
could be charged with individual
forms of personal resistance. As she
described it, these are site[s] of
fracture for purposeless negation, in
particular for the aimless passing of
time, materialized in the increase/
accumulation of waste. [They] lie
somewhere between coming to
a standstill and radical liberation.
This show of works recently acquired
for the museums collection includes
a group of oversized brick foot-
balls, drawings of interventions,
and videos of actions.
Tel: + 49 (0) 40 428 131 200
Web site
<www.hamburger-kunsthalle.de>
Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture
Garden
Hc||n|cn, |t
Ai Weiwei
||co| |e||oc|, .!, .o:,
Ais first major U.S. exhibition covers
the entire course of his eclectic out-
putphotography, video, ceramic
and marble works, and altered
antiquesevery piece aimed at a dif-
ferent chamber in the contradictory
heart of Chinese culture. Probing
relationships between past and pre-
sent, authenticity and imitation,
worthlessness and value, individual
and crowd, freedom and oppression,
these conceptually complex and visu-
ally provocative works push limits
and defy censorship (though a hand-
sculpted security camera guarantees
good behavior). The Hirshhorns care-
fully considered installation (with the
artist consulting) charts Ais escalat-
ing activism and inevitable collision
with Chinas ruling regime, effectively
stymieing claims that equate him
with Warhol. The newest work makes
the strongest statement yet, both
politically and visually. Rising and
falling in a succession of seismic
waves, 38 tons of ramrod-straight
rebar inscribe a fault line along a 12-
meter-long stretch of flooreach
piece recovered as a twisted and con-
torted ruin from the wreckage of col-
lapsed school buildings in Sichuan
and painstakingly restored. More
than an emanation of tragic negli-
gence, ||c||| serves as documen-
tary evidence (as chilling as the sal-
vaged backpacks of missing children
or the |:|ocn |c|||oc|e ||c|c),
a warning, and a hopeful inspiration.
Top left: Annette Wehrmann,
Absolut der richtige Sport fr mich!.
Left: Claes Oldenburg, Pastry Case I.
Above: Ai Weiwei, Straight.
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18 Sculpture 32.1
In Ais words: The tragic reality of
today is reflected in the true plight
of our spiritual existence: we are
spineless and cannot stand straight.
In conjunction with According to
What, the Sackler Gallery is showing
Ais large-scale installation ||cmen|
(2005), which pits traditional joinery
against the forces of modernization.
When seen from above, the forest of
arching forms (cobbled-together rem-
nants of works made from antiques
and temple elements) coalesces into
a map of China, suggesting that
national identityfar from a hege-
monic monolithcan only rise on a
foundation composed of discrete parts.
Tel: 202.633.1000
Web site
<http://hirshhorn.si.edu>
Kunsthalle Wien
/|ennc
Daniel Knorr
||co| |e||oc|, .3, .o:,
In his new outdoor work for the
museums Karlplatz public space,
Knorr materializes what most of us
know only as a disembodied image
filtered through mass media and
video games. |\|c|cn captures a
process that spans only fractions of
a second, suspending the expansion
of a bombs shock wave and render-
ing it physically graspable. Frozen
in time, given palpable mass and
force, this everyday metaphor
regains substance. In the stillness,
there is space to think about the
ramifications and consequences of
conflict, and our individual role in
itas observer, consumer, perpe-
trator, critic, or victim.
Tel: + 43 1 52189 0
Web site
<www.kunsthallewien.at>
Malm Konsthall
|c|mc, ueoen
Thea Djordjadze
||co| |cnoc|, .,, .o:,
Djordjadze makes small, elusive sculp-
tures from humble materials and
domestic detritus, including plaster,
wood, ceramic, glass, fabric, sponges,
soap, and cardboard. Her installations
evolve on site as she gathers individ-
ual objects into settings created from
more formal, controlled elements.
Though these inexplicable assem-
blages hint at narrative and personal
recollection, they refute explanation
and refuse coherent resolution. The
artifacts themselves project a certain
power, retaining something of the
aura that injects Surrealist juxtaposi-
tion with frisson or infuses Beuyss
materials with shamanistic/ritualistic
potency, but their efficacy is held in
check by a doubting literalisman
effective and sometimes uncomfort-
able combination.
Tel: + 46 40-34 12 93
Web site
<www.konsthall.malmo.se>
Maryland Institute College of Art
3c|||mc|e
Lenore Tawney
||co| |c|:| :,, .o:,
Credited with creating what we now
call fiber art, Tawney redefined the
scope of possibility not only in
weaving, but also in sculpture. Blur-
ring boundaries between art and
craft, she traversed multiple disci-
plines, including collage, assem-
blage, installation, and the written
word, in an effort to find creative
liberation. Immersive processes
revealed ways around accepted con-
ventions, showing a direction that
fused art and life in a series of acts
involving gathering, sorting, build-
ing up, and paring down materials.
This two-part survey (the second
part is at Baltimores University of
the Arts) also marks the first public
showing of the materials and per-
sonal collections that formed the
core of her carefully curated studio/
gallery/sanctuary/home, a 6ecm|
|on|ue|| of unexpected juxtaposi-
tions and experiences. Such work,
combining far-flung cultural refer-
ences, ancient and modern tech-
niques, conceptual rigor and mat-
erial passion, was certainly, in Agnes
Martins words, wholly unlooked
for.
Tel: 410.225.2300
Web site <www.mica.edu>
Left: Thea Djordjadze, installation
view with Fortified by being trans-
planted and Endless enclosure. Above:
Daniel Knorr, Explosion. Right:
Lenore Tawney, Drawing in Air XVII.
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Mass MoCA
|c||| /ocm, |cc:|oe||
Invisible Cities
||co| |e||oc|, !, .o:,
Like Italo Calvinos tour-de-force
novella of fantastical description,
Invisible Cities (the exhibition)
presents urban landscapes both
familiar and imaginary, leaving the
viewer, just like the reader, to
decide between reality and mirage.
Memory, desire, loss, history, and
atmosphere all conspire to dissolve
the solidity of buildings and streets,
giving rise to other, constantly
changing shadow citieseach one
built to the dreamers specifications.
Featured artists Lee Bul, Carlos
Garaicoa, Sopheap Pich, Emeka
Ogboh, Diana Al-Hadid, Francesco
Simeti, Miha

Strukelj, Kim Faler,
and Mary Lum remind us that any
city is as much an idea, a psycho-
logical and emotional experience,
as an assemblage of asphalt, brick,
steel, and glass. Their sensorial
spectrum reinforces Aldo Rossis fre-
quently violated maxim that in
order to be significant, architecture
must be forgotten, or must present
only an image for reverence which
subsequently becomes confounded
with memories.
Tel: 413.662.2111
Web site <www.massmoca.org>
Museum fr Gegenwartskunst
3ce|
Robert Gober
||co| |e||oc|, :o, .o:,
The conjunction of the familiar and
the unusual in Gobers sculptures
and installations exerts a seductive
fascination. Subtly, yet purposefully
diverging from everyday reality, his
workswhether replicas of domestic
objects such as washbasins, play-
pens, urinals, and bundles of newspa-
pers or representations of the frag-
mented human bodyconfuse the
boundary between the ordinary and
the unknown. This exhibition, which
centers on the site-specific installa-
tion ||| Hc|| u||| ||c|n (199495),
focuses on works that defy orienta-
tion and embrace transition. Con-
sidering the drain as a boundary
between light and dark, the visible
and the concealed, surface and sub-
terranean worlds, these uneasy imi-
tations of the apparently normal ven-
ture into potentially menacing zones
where clear-cut categories no longer
apply and bodily experience must be
constantly renegotiated.
Tel: + 41 (0) 61 206 62 62
Web site
<www.kunstmuseumbasel.ch>
Museum of Modern Art
cn ||cn:|:c
Rafael Lozano-Hemmer
||co| |e||oc|, ,, .o:,
One of the most important media
artists to emerge in the 1990s,
Mexican-born, Montreal-based
Lozano-Hemmer explores the politics
of public space through architec-
ture, new media, and performance.
Originally developed in response
to the Mexican governments crack-
down on pirate radio stations in
Chiapas and Guerrero and shown
here for the first time in the U.S.,
||eoen:, cno /c|ome, |e|c||cnc|
/|:|||e:|o|e ) (2003) transforms
viewers into partially witting radio
receivers and transmitters. Res-
ponding to the size and position of
human shadows on the wall via a
computer tracking system, the instal-
lation leads participants to use their
bodies as tuners for a range of pub-
lic and private frequenciesfrom
commercial music stations to police
bands, wireless telecomm systems,
and air traffic control. Raising timely
questions about who has access to
public space (whether real or virtual)
and who controls communication,
||eoen:, cno /c|ome also reveals
the two-sided bargain at the heart
of these exchanges: for every con-
versation, there is a listener
(whether were aware of it or not).
Tel: 415.357.4000
Web site <www.sfmoma.org>
Staatliche Kunsthalle
Baden-Baden
3coen3coen, 6e|mcn,
Bilderbedarf: The Civic and the Arts
||co| |e||oc|, :,, .o:,
Bilderbedarf, the first of two exhibi-
tions exploring the relevance of art
to public discourse, examines the
past 60 years, asking whether and
Above: Robert Gober, Melted Rifle. Top
right: Diana Al-Hadid, Nollis Orders,
from Invisible Cities. Right: Rafael
Lozano-Hemmer, Frequency and
Volume, Relational Architecture 9.
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20 Sculpture 32.1
through what means art has
impacted the world at large. While
some of the featured artists are
known for their activist intent
(Francis Als, Joseph Beuys, Jeremy
Deller, and Alfredo Jaar), other
choices seem unusual at first glance
(Karin Sander and Gerhard Richter).
Curators Johan Holten, Hendrik
Bndge, and Jacob Racek made their
selections according to one primary
criterionconcrete and verifiable
effect in the social realm. Such
effects can be indirect (Ren Blocks
1968 gift of German art to the
Czech village of Lidice, which was
destroyed by the Nazis, closed not
one, but two painful histories when
it was finally handed over after a
30-year disappearance in the wake
of the Prague Spring), as well as
direct (Christoph Schlingensiefs
/o|cnoe| |co' [|c|e|ne| 0o|',
2000], a reality-TV performance in
which people voted to evict immi-
grants from a container village
sparked public discussions about the
strict deportation policies of Austrias
right-wing Freedom Party). Symbolic
gestures, catalysts for discussion
and debate, and props in popular
movements, artworks, according to
this show, can make a difference in
the public realm, even from inside
the gallery.
Tel: + 49 7221-30076-400
Web site <www.
kunsthalle-baden-baden.de>
Utah Museum of Fine Arts
c|| |c|e t||,
Nancy Holt
||co| |cnoc|, .o, .o:,
Since the late 1960s, Holt has created
a variety of ambitious projects con-
joining sculpture, architecture, and
time-based media. Sightlines offers
an in-depth look at a group of pio-
neering projects, dating from 1966 to
1980, in which she transformed per-
ceptions of the landscape by direct-
ing and influencing the viewers
observational mode. In these films,
videos, photographs, installations,
and outdoor interventions, she devel-
oped a unique aesthetics of percep-
tion, employing cylindrical forms,
light, and techniques of reflection to
explore perspective, time, and space.
Visitors to this show, which features
elements from more than 40 pro-
jects, can also follow in the footsteps
of the legendary Land Art exodus,
abandoning the city for the remote
wilderness. Holts iconic on onne|
(197376), just a four-hour drive
away in Utahs Great Basin, puts all
of her principles into play. Not much
to look at in themselves, the con-
crete cylinders act as a buffer
between nature and culture, anchor-
ing the human body in an unknown
expanse while visually and physically
translating a vast desert landscape
into bite-size compositions that
change with the orientation of the
earth and celestial bodies.
Tel: 801.581.7332
Web site <www.umfa.utah.edu>
Yerba Buena Center for the Arts
cn ||cn:|:c
Nayland Blake
||co| |cnoc|, .,, .o:,
Blakes mixed-media work has been
described as disturbing, provocative,
elusive, tormented, sinister, hysteri-
cal, brutal, and tendernot to men-
tion masochistic. Among his best-
known pieces are a log cabin made
of tempting gingerbread squares
(|eeoe|, 1992) and a tap-dance per-
formance in which he wears a
bunny suit of the same weight as his
lover (|c|||n 0.e|, 2000). Though
his reputation rests on symbol-
laden works of black and white rab-
bits, ghosts, black liquid, and house-
hold objects gone awry, he is now
returning to an earlier, more intu-
itive, and spontaneous approach
to sculpture. The works featured in
FREE!LOVE!TOOL!BOX! pay tribute
to his San Francisco years, when he
forged a new aesthetic to express
a radicalized gay urban subculture.
Like |o|men| |c| c |cme|o| e|:
(1993), with its ready-made assem-
bly kit of materials, these new sculp-
tures rely on upcycling, bricolage,
and a selective reordering of a life-
times worth of relics; brought
together by chance, each piece is
nothing less than the residue of a
performative process and a way
to bring repressed attitudes to the
surface.
Tel: 415.978.2787
Web site <www.ybca.org>
itinerary
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Top left: Francis Als, When Faith Moves Mountains, from Bilderbedarf.
Left: Nancy Holt, Sun Tunnels (detail). Above: Nayland Blake, installation view
of FREE!LOVE!TOOL!BOX!.
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__________________ ___________________ ______________________________
Puttt AttAku Anu |usttn 0ucusnAu
Courtepointe
Montreal
Over the past few years, Philippe Allard and Justin Duchesneau have become intrigued
by a new trend in Montreal bike culturemilk crates serving as baskets. Just when they
thought the colorful plastic boxes had been used for everythingfrom storing LPs to
building furnituremilk crates found yet another non-milk-related function.
Allard and Duchesneau, who have worked together since 2009, specialize in monu-
mental installations made from recycled, industrial objects. Inspired by the modular and
pixilated potential of the milk crates, the duo recently draped a multicolored blanket of
crates over the faade of the Darling Foundry, an abandoned foundry, now turned art space.
Locating materials proved more difficult than they had imagined. Finding all those crates
was a sociological endeavor, Allard recalls. I was aiming for sponsorship from the milk
industry, but not only did they refuse to lend us crates, they also told us that it was illegal
to buy them. Since the suppliers werent cooperative, Allard and Duchesneau approached
vendors: We must have told our story to about 50 stores, before 20 of them, mostly outside
Montreal, sold us 15 to 25 crates at a time. The artists spent entire afternoons locating
crates to buy and transferring the milk containers to older, less colorful crates.
Courtepointe (French for quilt), the result of all this time and effort, covered the
Darling Foundrys front entrance. Visitors wanting to enter the building had to pass below
the work, where it extended from the faade across the sidewalk. Inside this space, the
shadows from the crates create[d] a neo-stained glass effectwhere you [could] feel the
tension between the mass of plastic and the wall of the building. Allard and Duchesneaus
cascading quilt conflated the vernacular and the modern, turning ordinary, utilitarian
plastic objects into a surprisingly versatile and compelling artistic medium.
6Aktu knnuv
IKEA Butter Churn for Gneeveguilla
Gneeveguilla, Ireland
One of Irelands most peculiar traditional practices involves burying casks of butter in bogs.
Bog butter, the product of this ritualized, and extremely practical, method of preserva-
tion, has been unearthed throughout the country, some of it dating back thousands of years.
The small town of Gneeveguilla is no exception, though its relationship to the nearby bog
is also more sinister. In 1896, villagers awakened to the thunderous noise of a bogslide,
which resulted in the deaths of several residents and their livestock. Stories of bog butter
and the Moving Bog still resonate with Gneeveguillas 500 present-day residents.
When the Kerry County Council commissioned Gareth Kennedy to create a public art
project for Gneeveguilla, he planned to set up an encounter in material culture that
would continue his work of creating folk fictions. In other words, he would use local
craftsmanship to create new invented traditions. Kennedy meticulously dug through
local histories and consulted the local historical societyevery Irish community,
no matter how small, has onebefore coming up with a specific idea. He worked with
Martin Ashe (a local craftsman) to build a butter churn and firkin out of IKEA tables,
invited the community to make butter in the new churn, and led a procession to bury
the firkin full of freshly churned butter in the same bog responsible for the late-19th-
century devastation. Kennedy documented the entire process on film. In March 2012,
residents attended the films premiere at the Gneeveguilla Village Hall and watched
themselves perform their new ritual.
From the beginning, the project got a lot of goodwill and all sorts of in-kind support,
from the use of a house in the town to having men I had only just met digging a hole in
the bog, Kennedy explains. Gneeveguilla residents were intrigued by the concept of using
22 Sculpture 32.1
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commissions commissions
Philippe Allard and Justin Duchesneau, Courtepointe
(Quilt), 2012. Used milk crates, fasteners, steel, and
concrete, 2 views of work.
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IKEA furniture to re-create an ancient tradi-
tion. Could this invented tradition eventu-
ally become a real one? In Ireland, we say
there is a festival for every two people.
Interestingly there is no festival of butter.
Maybe Gneeveguilla could take this on as
an annual event to bring people to the vil-
lage.
IKEA Butter Churn for Gneeveguillathe
churn and the filmis currently touring
Ireland as part of a show called Folk
Fiction, which also includes traditional
folkloric and ethnological displays. Mean-
while the IKEA butter firkin remains a
buried time capsule for future generations
to discover.
kAuMtA8ok8kttn
The World is Not FairThe Great Worlds
Fair 2012
Berlin
Shut down to air traffic in 2008, Berlins
Tempelhof Airport has since been repur-
posed as a site for temporary events ranging
from trade shows to music festivals. The
historic airfieldthe first with an under-
ground rail system (essential to Nazi war
efforts) and site of the Berlin Airlifthas
also become a favorite location for public
art projects. raumlaborberlin, a Berlin-based
architecture collective, has already used the
space three times. Last summer, the groups
The World is Not FairThe Great Worlds
Fair 2012 brought artists of all kinds to the
former airport to create and activate 15
makeshift pavilions and rethink the con-
cept of a worlds fair. As the collective
points out in the exhibition newspaper
which also traces the history of the worlds
fair from 1851 to the presentThe World
is Not Fair sought to focus attention on the
phenomenon of competitive exhibitions,
including the biennials and art fairs that
have become more about tourism and
money than the exhibited work. The analo-
gy to the worlds fair, which once displayed
colonized cultures in human zoos,
served as a breeding ground for nationalist
propaganda, and presented commodity
capitalism to mass audiences, thus serves
as a warning.
Throughout the month of June, raum-
laborberlin and local theater company
Hebbel am Ufer invited international artists
to participate in theatrical, dance, music,
film, and art performances in and around
the one-of-a-kind pavilions, all of which
were re-used, repurposed, or built from sal-
vaged materials. In addition to the theme of
the worlds fair, the project also investigated
Tempelhofs complex history and what it
might mean for future use. By 2017, Berlin
officials plan to transform the site into the
citys largest public park. raumlaborberlin
hopes that the new project doesnt hide
Tempelhofs past.
Elena Goukassian
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Gareth Kennedy, IKEA Butter Churn for Gneeveguilla,
201112. Birch and metal from IKEA furniture, 32-
min. Super 8 film, and publication, butter churn:
40 x 40 x 40 cm.
raumlaborberlin, The World is Not FairThe Great World's Fair 2012, 2012. Mixed media, 2 views of
project at Tempelhof Airport, Berlin.
Juries are convened each month to select works for Commissions. Information on recently completed commissions, along with high-resolution
digital images (300 dpi at 4 x 5 in. minimum), should be sent to: Commissions, Sculpture, 1633 Connecticut Avenue NW, 4th Floor, Washington,
DC 20009. E-mail <elena@sculpture.org>.
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The relationship between peo-
ple and the land is an abiding
theme in New Zealand art. A
number of works selected for
the 2013 installment of head-
land Sculpture on the Gulf,
a biennial outdoor sculpture
exhibition held on Waiheke
Island in Auckland, New
Zealand, continue that tradition
with a variety of forms and
approaches. While some of the
works prompt a feeling of fore-
boding, others strike a more
whimsical note. Some address
environmental and cultural
issues; others critique the
interaction between art and
individuals, exposing the
effectsoften unexpectedof
actions and reactions. For
example, Graham Bennetts
OVERVIEW OVERLOOK
OVERSEE favors mechanical
invention and intervention; Nic
Moons Breath takes a quietly
contemplative tone; and Jeff
Thomsons Knotty looks to a
personal, interactive approach
as does Regan Gentrys Death
Row.
The towering, Cor-ten steel
figures in Moons Breath sway
rhythmically in the wind, gaz-
ing out to sea from the cliff
edge. Elongated like the trunks
of tall trees, they stand in silent
contemplation. Leaf-skeleton
patterns derived from indige-
nous trees are laser cut into
the torsos of the figures, creat-
ing large, lung-like openings.
The outer edges mimic the
tooth patterns of the old pit
saws used by forest-clearing
settlers. In a formal context,
these human/tree/sawblade
hybrids reference Giacomettis
The Forest (1950). In environ-
mental terms, they address the
relationship between carbon
dioxide-breathing plants and
oxygen-breathing humans.
Each figure is capped by a sub-
tly carved stone head, inspired
by Brancusis Sleeping Muse
(190910). The heads create
a counterbalance to the stark,
gestural forms, expediting a
sensation of slight swaying in
the figures. Like elders stoop-
ing tenderly to speak to a
young child, the works bend
gently in the sea breeze. The
relatively flat site allows view-
ers to join the figures in quiet
reverie.
Viewing sculpture involves
developing a perspective, being
on watchlooking, seeing,
engaging. In OVERVIEW OVER-
LOOK OVERSEE, Bennett
extends these concepts to envi-
ronmental issues, a context in
which attention and intention
determine action. What shapes
your point of view, colors your
perspective? What plays on
your conscience? Where do you
pull your weight? Taking these
pivotal principles, Bennett cre-
ates a reciprocity with the
structure of his work by con-
sidering how measurement
informs our perspective or
point of view. The sculpture
finds its origins in the function
of pulleys, bearings, levers,
counterweights, and manual
implements for gauging weight,
time, and place.
Bennetts clock- and sextant-
like faux mechanisms are pre-
cise, strong, and weather resis-
tant, but essentially ineffectual.
A life-size, kitset figurean ele-
vated planking man of little
form or substancecompletes
this nonsensical apparatus.
Aucklands headland Sculpture on the Gulf
by Robin Woodward
Above: Graham Bennett, studies for OVERVIEW OVERLOOK OVERSEE, 2012.
Left: Nic Moon, Breath, 2012.
24 Sculpture 32.1
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inside, walking through,
around, and over it. Knotty was
inspired by a collection of
ropes and knots that Thomson
has collected from Aucklands
coastline over many years.
While Bennett, Moon, and
Thomson investigate general
principles, in Death Row,
Gentry focuses on a very spe-
cific, local issue affecting
Waiheke Island. Death Row
was the nickname for the
porch seating in front of the
islands well-known Rocky
Bay Store. For many years, the
store was one of only two
liquor outlets on the island; it
got the name because old folk
would sit out on the benches,
drinking, ruminating, and
passing the time in their twi-
light years.
The Rocky Bay Store was
built in the 1920s and operated
as a general store, caf, and
dance hall under a series of
commercial owners until 2002.
It served as a gathering point
for the community, supplying
locals and boaties who moored
in the bay. In 2002, the owners
decided that the store was no
longer commercially viable and
applied to redevelop the site.
Residents immediately sought,
and were granted, a heritage
protection order for the build-
ing; the store was saved until
October 2003, when it mysteri-
ously burned down. For the last
nine years, the ruin has stood
as a sad reminder of an icon,
the lost heart of the commu-
nity. (The local Omiha Resi-
dents Welfare Society proposed
to revive the store, run it, and
return any profits back to the
community, but its bid at the
April 2012 sale of the store and
adjoining properties was unsuc-
cessful.)
Every two years, visitors to
headland Sculpture on the
Gulf come to experience the
beauty of Waiheke Island.
Death Row offers an opportu-
nity for art tourists to connect
with real people and real prob-
lems on the island. Develop-
ment is a contentious issue on
Waiheke, offering opportunity
but also threatening traditional
lifestyles. Death Row symbol-
izes the threat posed by tourists
and commuters to a self-suffi-
cient, tight-knit community.
Gentry created an exact replica
of the original stores faade,
porch, and benches, con-
structed with similar materials,
colors, and signage, Rocky Bay
residents are free to use this
facsimile as a venue to voice
their concerns about develop-
mentto promote their hope
for a new store that will refocus
their sense of community. In
the spirit of community out-
reach and dialogue, Gentry has
invited the Omiha Residents
Welfare Society to occupy his
work for the duration of the
exhibition, which remains on
view through February 17.
The figure rotates freely, its
counterbalanced weight
enabling it to oscillate with the
elements, so that it seems
to move independently of the
attached measuring scales. As
well as being kinetic, it is also
interactive. The mechanisms in
the sculpture are out of reach,
but a pulley system allows
viewers to alter the reading on
the last quadrant of the environ-
mental clock. Viewers can
manipulate the height of the fig-
ure by pulling on a handle; as
the adjustment registers and the
figure rises and falls, the work
raises question about the rela-
tionship between man and mea-
sure.
Thomsons contribution is
also interactive, focusing on the
impact of architectural and
large sculptural works on per-
ceptions of the landscape.
Knotty can be seen in relation
to Contour, his 2005 Sculpture
on the Gulf entrya giant
licorice strap of corrugated, gal-
vanized steel that rolled down
the hillside at Matiatia Bay.
This year, Thomsons sculpture
takes on an even grander scale.
Weathered, corrugated iron
is twisted, wound, and knotted
into an environment-producing
work that visitors can get
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Regan Gentry, conceptual rendering
of Death Row, 2012.
Jeff Thomson, rendering of Knotty,
2012.
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The setting of the installation plays out the falseness and futility in the
objects, the artificial. Our engagement with the world of objects is very con-
nected to our own mortality. In our making and gathering of objects, there
is a sense of futility. And we continue to engage in this futility knowing full
well it is not real. The market plays on this notion. Enchantment and disen-
chantment can happen at the same time, says Sudarshan Shetty. Unedited
reality, tinged with philosophy, forms the conceptual basis of his sculptures
and installationsso much so that the objects themselves can become inci-
dental in the face of the thoughts, emotions, and connotations that they
reveal. Shettys works provoke, entertain, and enthrall, luring the viewer
into another world. Drawing on the artists personal history, these creations
inspire us to recall or imagine similar experiences, thus establishing a bond
or connection that creates a thought-provoking dimension of its own.
BY CHITRA BALASUBRAMANIAM
Opposite: Untitled, from this too shall
pass, 2010. Wooden chair, paint on
fiberglass, neon, stainless steel, and glass
vitrine, 141 x 92 x 92 cm. This page:
Untitled, from Love, 2006. Aluminum,
brass, electric wire, motor, and mechani-
cal device, 111 x 110 x 22 in. C
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Futility and
Enchantment
Sudarshan
Shetty
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Born in Mangalore in 1961, Shetty is now based in Mumbai, a
city that echoes through many of his works. His love for painting
and sculpture developed early: I was good at painting in school
and won many awards for it. Also, I was making money painting
portraits. Though he wanted to take up painting professionally,
when the choice of a career came, family pressure convinced him
to study commerce in order to secure a good job. Shetty recalls,
I was miserable doing it, so eventually I gave it up and went
to study at the Sir Jamsetjee Jeejeebhoy School of Art. Here, he
became interested in contemporary art and began to play with
various mediums, an approach that continues to define his sculp-
tures and installations: I first worked with found objects, putting
them together and painting over them, while studying painting.
Shettys kinetic sculpture installations evolved out of early experi-
ments with mechanized motors. When he went to Ahmedabad to
study at the Kanoria Centre for Arts, he added another component
to his repertoire and began to cast found objects in different mate-
rials. For example, he cast a bottle in terra cotta, fiberglass, and
bronze. From here, he started to combine objects in larger instal-
lations. The objects, Shetty explains, were humble items for
everyday use, which are usually never given a thought. The putting
together of these diverse objects was such that they generated
surprise as to why they were together; there was something absurd
about it. This created a sense of togetherness for the objects. The
process of combining these objects was sometimes conscious and
sometimes subliminal, almost subconscious. In his installations,
everyday objectsteacups, terra-cotta pots, and tablesare
cleverly juxtaposed in curious ensembles that lead beyond ordi-
nary forms and functions.
As Shetty says, Our concept of art is shaped by the Modernist
art of the West, which we imbibed without questioning it. In the
West, knowledge arises from knowing the world, which then helps
in the understanding of the individual. In India, it is the reverse:
understand yourself well, and then it is easier to understand the
world. Shettys work has moved from West to East: Where earlier
[my work] was assimilating or moving toward the center, today,
I start with the core, the essence, and then construct around it.
Speaking about his exhibition Listen outside this House, Shetty
says, In my latest show, I have started to use words from my own
experience, though it might be classified as fiction. The texts are
written as third-person accounts of an experience that could be
mine or could belong to anyone. It is generic. The words are written
in one line: 150 words read in one go breathlessly without full stops
or commas. It allows for the world of words to have an opportu-
nity in the world of objects. The words have little or no correla-
tion to the objects; instead, they offer apossibility that evokes
a response, triggers something in the memory or imagination.
28 Sculpture 32.1
Untitled, from Between the teacup and a sinking constellation, 2011. Wood,
sword, stainless steel, mild steel, granite construction stone, rope, and
motor, 237 x 240 x 30 cm.
Untitled, from Listen outside this house, 2011. Wood and Perspex, 102
x 102 x 138 in. C
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The phrase Listen outside this house conjures myriad
interpretations, including relevance to the world beyond
art. Is it a way to reach out and include everyone by
picking up nuances from the common world? A way
of connecting the artists imagination to everyday life,
and giving it an impact in the real world? Viewers are
drawn to Shettys work because he does not impose a
viewpoint; everyone can interpret his fluid composi-
tions in a personal way.
In Listen outside this house, a work made from a
jacket, a shirt, wood, letter transfers, and paint is over-
painted with a circle of words that repeat the phrase
what will change is what will last. The paradox goes
around in an endless circle, the words bringing out the
duality of change and permanence, the absolute noth-
ingness of everything, and the potential irrelevance of
it all. In another installation, words taken from film
hoardings are strung together in a poetic presentation
of the mundane. Pages from the Ramayana and the
Mahabharata appear with highlighted words, as Shetty
Left: Untitled, 2010. Gold leaf on fiberglass, mild steel, coin
box, and etched brass, 425 x 197 x 122 cm. Below: Untitled,
2010. Teak wood and motorized mechanical device, 258 x 146
x 141 cm. Both from this too shall pass.
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looks for my own story within them. Written around
a dilapidated historical monument, the words, He
saw her waiting at the bus stop across the street from
where they met as he walked by and never looked back
to know if he was dreaming, bring out the fact that
nothing is permanent. The stringing of the words
creates a continuous present, though the past tense
again reveals the play of opposites.
Duality also characterizes the series Between the
tea cup and a sinking constellation (2011) in which a
teacup stands in for the concerns of the present, while
a sinking constellation captures the transient nature
of it all. The notion of the momentary gave a layer of
edge to Shettys exhibition at the Dr. Bhau Daji Lad
Museum in Mumbai. this too shall pass (2010) under-
scored the irony behind the desire to make the past into
a present. Shetty does not find anything depressing
about such plays with mortality and juxtapositions of
30 Sculpture 32.1
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Above: Untitled, 2006. Metal, glass, pumps, water, motor, and
mechanical device, 188 x 80.5 x 27 in. Left: Untitled, 2006.
Paper, brailler, wooden table, and mechanical device, 44 x 36 x
24 in. Both from Love.
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life and death, explaining, It is the truth, and we subconsciously
acknowledge it, but still go about the mundane, cyclical process
of enchantment and disenchantment which leads to creation.
Shettys materials might seem secondary to his message, but
that is not the case: Over the years, you acquire a sense of rigor
in what you do. Rigor is very important. The choice of the
medium/material becomes second nature. Ideas now synchronize
perfectly with materials. The years of hard work have resulted in
the honing of craftsmanship and skill, so that he understands what
the material is capable of doing or what associations it can raise.
The material itself works in the background, while the concept
occupies the foreground. Shetty gives the example of a work made
of wood and motors from this too shall pass, which replicates a
demolished car down to the minutest detail. Using a material such
as bronze or fiberglass would have required working with a mold
and resulted in an extension of the crashed object. With wood, the
event is re-created afresh and the thought plays out longer.
Some critics argue that such a degree of familiarity with mate-
rials carries the danger of repetition and stagnation, but Shetty
doesnt believe that this is a necessary outcome: You want to side-
step any mannerism you may have gathered by making objects over
the years. An artists job is to view the work from a distance, sidestep
it, and view it from outside the studio space.
Drama plays a key role in Shettys installation. His father was an
artist in the traditional Yakshagana theater, which combines dia-
logue, music, dance, costumes, and staging to hold audiences spell-
bound. Shetty learned from this hybrid form, staging dramas within
his installations that immerse viewers in the story and hold them
riveted through a variety of means, including motorized accessories.
Shetty says that his inspiration comes from nearly everything.
His 2006 show, Love, grew out of a visit to a school for the blind
and centered on Braille as a focal point. In this too shall pass, a
statue works with a slot-machine-operated mechanism. A wooden
lattice door carved with a tree of life motif was inspired by Ahmeda-
bads Sidi Saiyyed mosque and carved by craftsmen at Mumbais
Crawford Market who usually work on antique reproductions.
Shetty is currently working on a bus project for Mumbai, the city
of dreams. Will he ever get back to painting? Right now he is more
interested in moving further out into the world: Installation is
working with people and a group, while painting is a solitary
exercise requiring another kind of mental make-up and rigor.
Chitra Balasubramaniam is a writer based in New Delhi.
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Untitled, from Love, 2006. Stainless steel, fiberglass, auto paint, motor, and
mechanical device, dinosaur: 202 x 106 x 85.5 in.; Jaguar: 172 x 60 x 50 in.
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Vibha Galhotra
Altering Boon (detail), 2011. Glass beads, wire, and wood, 136 x 36 in.
BY SUSAN CANNING
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Vibha Galhotras first exhibition at Jack
Shainman Gallery began dramatically with
Neo Camouflage (2008), an installation in
which four mannequins dressed in military
garb stood guard before a large photo
mural of Old Delhi rooftops. The panoramic
vista, seen from a tower of the Jama Masjid
mosque (the citys highest spot), casts a
god-like omnipresence and aura of surveil-
lance over the seemingly endless expanse
of buildings, streets, and rooftops, even as
the viewdigitally expanded and manipu-
lated through Photoshop mirroring
describes a place of overwhelming density
and unfettered development. Reprinted
on the mannequins uniforms, the same
photograph serves as camouflage that
allows these stern sentinels to blend into
the city unfolding behind them. Controlling
access to what is seen, watching while
being watched, these cloaked figures put
us on notice: look carefully, for things are
not what they seem. Camouflage, the art
of visual deception, lies at the heart of
Galhotras sculptural project. Willfully and
purposefully, she obfuscates our vision in
order to interrogate the discourses of power
hidden in plain sight.
Her central concern is the global economy
and its effect on the environment, especially
in developing countries like her native India,
which is coping with the complex chal-
lenges brought on by over-development,
ecological destruction, and climate change.
While her agenda is serious, Galhotra resists
polemical posturing, disguising her mes-
sage in sculptures, paintings, and installa-
tions notable for their enticing charm and
often delicate beauty.
A number of her works are fabricated
with ghungroos, the tiny ankle bells that
provide musical accompaniment for Indian
classical dancers. Enticing and exotic, these
bells serve as visible and audible signs
of womens public performance in Indian
culture and art. Related to the North Indian
payal or pajebanklets whose bells
melodiously accompany womens domestic
laborghungroos also speak to the con-
cealed narratives of class and power that
shape the often repressive reality of daily
of life for lower caste Indian women. Ghun-
groos are also worn as ornaments by new
brides and are familiar motifs of popular
culture, especially in Indian cinema and
poetry, where they are commonly linked
to the spectacle of the bazaar and the fallen
woman; when cracked or broken, they sig-
nify the loss of virginity.
Galhotra recycles this potent symbol of
femininity, transforming womens daily
experience into the connective element of
her sculptural forms. Used in profuse abun-
dance, the ghungroos gain in expressive
forcetheir overwhelming numbers sig-
naling not only collective agency, but also
the contrary and subversive possibilities of
excess. Shared empowerment is embedded
in Galhotras process, arising from the inten-
sive communal activity of the working-class
women whom she employs to turn their
traditional domestic skills into art while
34 Sculpture 32.1
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Between Known and Unknown, 2011. Nickel-coated
ghungroos, fabric, polyurethane, thread, wood,
and metal, 45 x 17 x 17 in.
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collectively hand-sewing the bells onto the sculptures.
Shaped into rugs, a coiling rope, a beehive, even an
earthmover, the diminutive ghungroos disguise their
means of production, their narratives of gender and
class, environmental concerns, and feminist critique
behind an enticing, brassy bright, shimmering veil.
When covered with ankle bells, Dead Monster, Galhotras
life-size re-creation of an earthmoverthat
ubiquitous vehicle of urban construction
and developmentbecomes a sort of alien:
a strange, groveling, dragon-like grotesque,
a monster without shape or purpose, whose
destructive swagger has been rendered
flaccid and powerless by decorative excess.
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Above: Dead Monster, 2011. Nickel-
coated ghungroos, fabric, poly-
urethane, thread, and steel, dimen-
sions variable. Below and detail:
Between, 2011. Nickel-coated ghun-
groos, fabric, polyurethane, thread,
and steel, dimensions variable.
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Between Known and Unknown features
one of the earliest forms that Galhotra
encrusted with ankle bellsthe beehive.
Here, the beehive is hidden beneath a
wooden table topped by a globe, a config-
uration that alludes to the disappearance
of this once plentiful feature of rural India.
The assembled elements metaphorically
describe the symbioticand exploitive
relationship between the colonized and the
colonizer. Indeed, the hives organic body,
attached to the table that it appears
to nurture, has been assimilatednatural
resources covered over, disguised, and sub-
sumed by the tables elegant and stylized
form. Culture trumps nature, sustaining
the hierarchy of power proclaimed by the
small but imperious globe at the top.
Resembling an internal organ, or perhaps
a climbing vine, the ghungroo-covered coil
of Between also explores the contradictions
of an in-between state. Rising up mysteri-
ously to the ceiling like a ladder, the rope
offers viewers a luminous, glittering escape
route, even as it collapses into a tangled
pile on the floor, offsetting the promise of
transcendence with the repetitive, arduous
tasks of the everyday. On another level, the
coiling rope that spills across the floor can
be linked to the body, specifically to the
intestines, its mottled surface alluding to diet
and consumption, disease and contagion,
as well as to Galhotras struggle with colitis.
Likewise, Word Trash and (De)Constructing
Thoughts offer multiple readings, with text
as their material. Sewn into wall tapestries,
the ghungroos spell out words that, depend-
ing on your perspective, either come into
focus or devolve into jargon-laden babble.
36 Sculpture 32.1
Above: Altering Boon, 2011. Glass beads, wire,
and wood, 136 x 36 in. Below: Word Trash,
2012. Nickel-coated ghungroos, fabric, thread,
and polyurethane, 103 x 108 in.
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Descriptive, contradictory, associative, disrup-
tive or fragmentary, collapsing or expanding,
the words dynamically articulate the con-
flicting agendas of Modernism. Material-
ized into an irregular, reflective surface by
the ankle bells, the letters and words again
become camouflage, overlapping patterns
of texture and monochromatic color that
conceal and undermine any attempt at
cohesive meaning. In these tapestries, Mod-
ernisms utopian narrative has degenerated
into decoration, ersatz formalism without
meaning or purpose.
Other works explore themes of dislocation
and unsustainability as Galhotra deploys the
disarming allure of craft to visualize envi-
ronmental concerns. In Altering Boon, she
weaves glass beads and stainless steel wire
into a flimsy hammock. The beads coalesce
into a world map that casts a shadow along
the floor. Obliquely present and yet hardly
able to sustain its own shadow, on the verge
of collapse and implying that there is more
beneath the surface, the hammock serves
as a metaphor for a fragile global ecology.
In other works, Galhotra uses natural
materials, like sediment from the holy river
Yamuna, to trace the pollution brought by
development. In White Noise, she makes a
cast of a brick wall in rag paper, creating an
anti-monument to unregulated urban con-
struction that replicates the dicey and often
unsubstantial materials used in India and
other developing countries.
Just as Galhotra positions the mannequins
in Neo Camouflage between statesmerg-
ing into and standing guard in front of the
photo mural of Old Delhishe situates art
world viewers in the gap between the famil-
iar and comfortable space of Modernisms
utopian promise and the dislocated, contrary,
and troubled space that this promise has
become in the developing world. Hidden in
plain sight, Modernisms utopian/dystopian
dualities are revealed and critiqued by Gal-
hotras coyly seductive deceptions. Her dis-
sent, an alternative strategy of poetic inter-
vention and feminist critique camouflaged
within non-traditional materials and labor-
intensive methods, unmasks and reveals
the underlying agenda and hidden power
behind global development and its legacy
of environmental destruction.
Susan Canning is a writer and educator
based in New York.
Vibha Galhotras work is now on view in the
solo exhibition, Metropia, at the South-
eastern Center for Contemporary Art in
Winston-Salem, North Carolina, through
February 10, 2013.
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Neo Camouflage, 2008. Digital print on fabric and
vinyl, mannequins, shoes, and belts, installation
view.
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Ptko
6ttAkut
BY ANDREA BELLINI
Artistic and
Social Renewal
A Conversation with
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Piero Gilardi began his artistic activity in the 1960s and participated in the birth
of Arte Povera. After achieving fame in the 1970s, he turned away from the
art world and began investigating the phenomenon of collective and sponta-
neous creativity in various social contexts. Gilardi has devoted the last 10 years
to his most ambitious endeavor to date, the Parco Arte Vivente (Park of Living
Art or PAV). A collaborative effort that grew from Gilardis design, PAV is a
monumental undertaking that transformed a disused parcel of land in the
heart of Turins working- class Lingotto district into a six-acre green space
devoted to community, environmental, and artistic concerns. Commissioned
earthworks by Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster and Lara Almarcegui define the
site and provide an ongoing place of exploration for city residents and visitors
alike. Gilardis experimental center for contemporary art and research creates
dialogues that bring together contemporary art, nature, biotechnology, and ecol-
ogy and provides opportunities for the public and artists to meet and collaborate.
Despite its success, this urban oasis is now threatened by Italys budget cuts
to museums and cultural organizations. After two years of austerity, the impact
of 2012s large-scale cuts has been dramatic, and PAV is struggling to survive.
Gilardi has been financing the park by selling his own work, but this is no
longer enough, and PAV may have to close its doors, which would mean no
more residencies, exhibitions, or workshops with artists such as Andrea Polli,
Eduardo Kac, and Brandon Ballenge. Gilardi is putting together a Friends of
PAV membership group in Europe and the United States. More information
about PAV is available at <www.parcoartevivente.it>.
Andrea Bellini: Of the artists who gravitated around the gallery of Gian Enzo
Sperone in the mid-60s, you are the only one, except for Michelangelo Pisto-
letto, who has created a place open to the public, a space for meeting and
sharing. What is the Parco Arte Vivente, and why was it created?
Piero Gilardi: Youre right to mention Pistoletto, because his Cittadellarte shows
the strong correspondence between us in terms of artistic projects and ideals.
PAV is simultaneously a work of relational art, not unlike the ideal town
built by Rirkrit Tiravanija, Philippe Parreno, and Pierre Huyghe in Ceylon, and
an innovative museum that can be called an interactive museum in nature.
PAV was created to meet a political need, to provide the city with a center
related to the artistic heritage of Arte Povera that would propose and per-
petuate interrelations, experimentalism, and social generativity.
AB: Where does the Parco Arte Vivente fit into your creative process? What
do you think is the continuity with your previous work?
PG: I consider the creation of PAV, its construction, and its present manage-
ment as a public institution that summarizes nearly half a century of artistic
research, which has led me through artistic movements such as Arte Povera,
new media art, and now bioart. The element of continuity can be found in the
dialectic between nature and culture that underlies much of my artistic pro-
duction and has now found a more mature and advanced formulation in PAV.
AB: So you see a substantial continuity between your Nature-carpets of the
60s, which made you famous thanks to exhibitions at the galleries of Gian
Enzo Sperone and Ileana Sonnabend, the experience of political activism, and
finally PAV. In 1968, you decided to leave the art world to devote yourself to
Opposite, top left: PAV site. Bottom left: Piero Gilardi, Nature Relief, permanent installation.
Top right: View of greenhouse and pedestrian square. Bottom right: Piero Gilardi, Smell
Essence, permanent installation. This page, top to bottom: Workshop with Gilardi. Exhibition
view of Eduardo Kac, Living Works, 2011. Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster, Trfle, 2006.
Andreas Gedin, Take off, 2011. Emmanuel Louisgrand, Folie du PAV, 2009.
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activities in the social realm, first in a psychiatric hospital and then in radical
leftist groups. You did not want to fall into the contradiction of the rev-
olutionary artist engaged in producing works for the houses of the bour-
geoisie. On a strictly ideological level, have your positions changed since
that period?
PG: The refusal to produce art products for the Sonnabend Gallery had a
prologue in 1967, when Ileana, after seeing my poor objectsof which
Sandals and comb is the only remaining examplesaid that I had made a
blunder and that I should go back to making Nature-carpets. This lack of
inventive freedom opened up a contradiction for me that matured in 68,
based on a broader and more radical political analysis.
As in every historical phase of societal and cultural
change, in 68 there was a need for a strong rift prior
to a process of reform.
For me, the reform of art happened in the work
that I carried out for 10 years in collective and spon-
taneous creativity, an idea that was very much alive
throughout the 70s. The relational dimension of PAV
has its roots in that reform. Today, I work with open-
minded galleries without ideological preconceptions,
and producing artworks for collectors is integrated into
an articulated, complex activity in which the emerging
sense is that of ethically committed and socially
responsible artistic planning.
AB: One strictly political question: What did terrorism
and the Red Brigade attacks in Italy mean for your
movement?
PG: The red terrorism of the 70s was destructive for
the mass movement because it violently replaced the
struggle of the masses, depriving it of authority. Not
by chance, terrorism has been called a vaccine that
the system self-injected, through the secret services,
to produce the antidote of the laws against freedom,
which then stifled the struggles of the mass popula-
tion.
AB: Several of your texts about PAV make reference to
the concept of a cell. Could you explain this idea?
PG: PAVs architect says that the central structure of
the park, the hill of the Bioma building, takes the
precise shape of a circular cell. More generally, the
biological cell is the paradigmatic figure that inspired
the bioart-related themes of the park.
AB: So the cell is a metaphor that describes PAVs
operational and cultural dimensions. How did the
park come into being, and what difficulties did you
face? What is your relationship with the Italian
political structure, which is, almost by definition,
unstable?
PG: The political difficulties stemmed from right-wing
and moderate opposition to the ecological and envi-
ronmental significance of the project. There have
been newspaper articles accusing us of wasting public
money for works that ended up in the trash, such as
Michel Blazys squeezed oranges. We had other diffi-
culties with the local bureaucracy, which placed dis-
proportionate formal constraints on us.
AB: PAV operates within a specific political position. Im
thinking, for example, of the importance of involving
the general public and the ethical dimension of the
entire project.
PG: Public involvement is a central focus. Artists invited
to develop projects in the park also conduct workshops.
Our department of educational and training activities
brings our proposals for expressive ecological activities
40 Sculpture 32.1
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Above: Exhibition view of Marta de Menezes, Body Nature, 2011. Below: View of out-
door workshop, 2011.
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into the Turin-area schools. Park personnel accompany
visitors on outdoor and indoor tours of the center.
Perhaps the most interesting aspect is visitor involve-
ment in the construction of PAVs theory through
seminars and the development of each years art
program.
AB: How many people work at PAV with you? What
kinds of activities take place?
PG: The core activities are the artists projects, which
take the form of site-specific installations in the park
and indoor exhibitions. These actions are procedural
in nature and typically follow the time-span of natural
growth cycles. The staff consists of 10 operators, sup-
ported by external consultants and service coopera-
tives, such as the one for the gardeners.
AB: Italy, especially with the current economic crisis,
invests very little in culture and people. Unfavorable
laws provide less and less funding for cultural activi-
ties. How do you find funding for PAV?
PG: The funding comes from a management fund pro-
vided by the City of Turin, the owner of the institution.
However, cuts to cultural funding have forced us to
look elsewhere to reach our annual budget of one
million Euros, and we have solicited contributions
from bank foundations and companies in the green
sector.
AB: Have you invested personal funds in the project?
PG: On a personal level, I have invested a lot in PAVs
planning and construction. For example, the entire
internal path of interactive installations, the Bioma,
was my donation. Obviously, I also intervene in eco-
nomic terms. In most cases, the budget that we can
devote to an artists project is not sufficient to cover
its implementation. This was the case, for example,
with Gilles Clments Jardin Mandala.
AB: I imagine that youve considered the problem of
PAVs survival. What do you have in mind for the future?
PG: We have established a cultural foundation with
the participation of the City of Turin. This has enabled
us to collect more resources from private patronage
and corporate sponsorship sources consistent with the
sustainability of our site.
AB: It might be interesting for you to set up an inter-
national structure, a Friends association that could
help with fundraising. What do you think?
PG: We certainly intend to expand our little club of
friends on the international level. We work with a
range of international artists, and so we can easily turn
to their collectors and patrons with the opportunity
to support our pilot experience of museological
renewal.
AB: In an ideal world, what would PAV be in the
future? How might it improve the lives of the people
of Turin and of visitors?
PG: I think that art is always able to affect the existential and social prob-
lems of our lives. New resources from both the public and private sectors
will enable us to extend our opening hours and offer more and more exciting
activities to the people of this city. I consider PAV to be an ongoing project, a
current and future generator of new creative expression, as well as new modes
of existence that will create a renewed, frugal, and environmentally friendly
human civilization.
Andrea Bellini is a writer and curator based in Geneva.
Above: Andrea Caretto and Raffaella Spagna, Pedogenesis, 2009. Below: Gilles Clment,
Jardin Mandala, 2010.
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Once Was, 2012. Old estate pool, pool house,
and adjoining grounds, soil, roots, vines, stone,
poplar bark, deadfall, and plants; approx. 0.5-
acre site. View of project at the Abington Art
Center, Jenkintown, PA. G
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Place as
a Condition
of Time
A Conversation with
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BY STACY LEVY
Winifred Lutzs work crosses the boundaries of seemingly divergent
disciplines and encompasses many angles of thinking. In this interview,
we knew that we could only touch on one aspect of her work, so we chose
to look through the lens of the garden since we share a deep interest in the
dynamic processes of the living landscape. Lutzs outdoor, site-integrated
works have offered new perspectives on the natural world to the countless
people who have walked through and spent time in them. Once Was, a
new work created at the Abington Art Center in Jenkintown, Pennsylvania,
for her recent retrospective, was maintained for the duration of the show
and has now been left to nature. Lutzs projects continually open eyes and
minds to new possibilities, just like her teaching, for which she recently
received the ISCs Outstanding Educator Award.
Stacy Levy: When did you first feel a resonance from the landscape?
Winifred Lutz: When I was seven, I saw a purple line on the horizon become a wall as we
drove across Colorado toward the Rocky Mountains. Our family was moving from Detroit
to Denver by driving across the Great Plains. Later, from the mountains, I saw clouds
floating and casting shadows on the plains. These shifts in perspective were a revelation.
During later trips through Colorado and Utah, I would look out at passing rock formations
and imagine how I might build structures in them. In a way, I wanted to make mountains.
From the age of five, I knew that I wanted to be a sculptor, but I didnt have any clear
sense of what that meant other than making things. Throughout my formal art training,
I thought that the only way I could achieve such spaces was through metaphorical fab-
rications that might call these experiences to mind. I didnt know then about Japanese
garden theory and practice or about landscape architecture.
SL: How do you approach a site?
WL: All of my site-integrated work springs from the conviction that there is no such thing
as a bad placeonly factors and how we
perceive them. By factors, I mean every-
thing: not only things as simple as the phys-
ical dimensions of a site, but also its various
histories in time (social, cultural, botanical,
geological, meteorological, and archaeo-
logical), the daily and seasonal aspects of
its present use, and the variety of its users.
The time that I spend in a place to be in
it and to work in it, as well as how long
I assume my interference will last (in all
different senses of what that means), are
profoundly crucial factors. I need to be in
a place and to feel it through without pre-
conception. But I also need to be informed
by as many sources as possible, because you
never know what it is or can be. Invisibility
is the poker face of a placewe do not see
things because we dont know we are dis-
tracted. Our presence is always an interfer-
ence. And I always wonder how and to what
extent this both confuses and clarifies things.
Anywhere we go to do something, a
choice exists between an action that stands
out and is easily recognized as an interven-
tion and one that collaborates with the situa-
tion so that it might not be clear that any-
thing was done at all. I am interested in that
difference and how that choice influences
subsequent experience of the place.
44 Sculpture 32.1
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Once Was, 2012. Detail of pool house porch.
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SL: You talk about starting a reaction, an interference, that continues and changesis
never still. I remember that you wrote a poem with the lines, Tickle the edges, if you
will, / the aftermath is never still.
WL: I wrote that in 1988 in an attempt to describe what I do in words that evoke the
process. We know that landscape is a cultural concept, so it is defined by its constituen-
cies. But it is also true that all interferences in a site are simultaneously both permanent
and ephemeral. What degree of interference in a situation tips the balance of attention?
How do we come to see what is there? How is it that we choose to pay attention? What
allows the understanding that distinguishes one thing from another in the midst of the
avalanche of stimuli that we encounter every moment?
SL: Your work crosses several boundaries of practice. How did you develop a way to bind
them together?
WL: Its more how one creative practice yields different outcomes depending on the bound-
aries. In 1979, I traveled to Japan and Korea on a Ford Foundation grant. This trip allowed
me to study Japanese and Korean papermaking, as well as Japanese gardens. Some of the
best gardens were designed by itinerant monks. Walking in the uncultivated mountains
allowed me to observe how experience of these places may have influenced the garden
designers. I saw how the gardens developed out of an active experience of seeing while
walking in the mountain landscape. Reciprocally, in the gardens, I saw the economy in
the full use of very limited spacelike the Chinese saying about packing 100 miles into
a foot. They affirmed both pragmatic and spiritual aims as they created spaciousness
irrespective of size.
In this regard, not only the gardens, but also the very small studios that I visitedof
paper craftsmen, tool makers, and a basketmakerrevealed a focus and clarity of orga-
nization, an economy and precision of movement, that has had a profound influence on
how I study and design my spaces and make my objects. Both the gardens and the stu-
dios affirmed the importance of still time and regular maintenance as necessities in both
creation and appreciation. I felt then, and still do, that a link in the approach to practice
connects the gardens and the papermaking. I call it the engagement of the structure of
necessity. Quite simply, it is working with what you have.
SL: You have maintained full-time teaching while doing some rather arduous projects. How
do you view the relationship between your teaching and your work?
WL: Teaching is part of my creative practice. It requires the same in-depth observation and
response without bias to situations. In a way, I consider each a practice for the other,
because in both I have to be aware in the present and to collaborate with all of the con-
ditions of which I am aware in order to facili-
tate an outcome that allows a different form
of understanding.
SL: You activate spaces with very subtle
changes to the site. For Interruption, your
piece at Haystack on Deer Isle, Maine, you
found a situation that you translated so
viewers could see it. How did that work?
WL: While walking the trails, I saw a dark,
tilted silhouette among the trees toward
the shore. Two spruce trees had fallen over
intact. Their paired root fans formed a broad
wall about 15 feet wide, but barely a foot
and a half thick. The two trunks straddled
a third, massive, older spruce that had been
snapped by winds many years previously.
The uprooting had lifted an entire section
of the forest floor. The root fans upper sur-
face was surprisingly intact. The under-
side was a tangled mass of loose earth,
root trailers, and assorted limbs broken
from surrounding growth as the trees came
down. The curves of the bared granite
outcrop where the trees had grown revealed
the resistance that had impeded the roots
downward growth and channeled their
interlace. It was as if a history book had
been opened. If I cleared the pages, any-
one could read it.
All I did was clean it. I spent two days
cleaning the bottom of the root fan and
sweeping the footprint it had left on the
granite. I also cleared various branches that
had been broken from adjacent trees by the
fall. About a cubic yard of soil came away
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Once Was, 2012. Above: detail of reclaimed bluestone path. Right: detail of poplar bark door.
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from the roots. I displaced this to a point
down the slope and near the water where
two spruces grew in a similar situation, with
perhaps a similar fate in store. The soil is
there now, shaped into a conical mound,
a marker made from the debris of one inter-
ruption to foreshadow an anticipated recur-
rence. Eventually it will settle and be grown
over or dispersed. Easily visible downhill
from the root fan, the mound has become,
in position and content, an enigmatic foot-
note to the primary event.
SL: There is an active interplay of time and
place in your work. Could you talk about the
different sorts of time that you capture?
WL: Time and place are always a coming
together of the sublime and the mundane,
like the massive split boulder that I encoun-
tered while hiking up Stone Mountain in
Georgia: the path went between the halves.
On each half were richly patterned surfaces
that turned out to be wads of chewing gum
deposited by hikers as they walked to the
top. Gum and stone are accumulations that
register the past and continuing processes
of the place. Focused on getting to the top,
the gum chewers didnt see the stone. They
left a register of their passing that was more
evident to subsequent hikers than the actual
history in the split boulder. Was this because
it is closer to the pace of their lives? I like
to work with that range.
SL: Is this what you mean by fluidity of a
site across time?
WL: All spaces and places are fluid. We dont
know most of the time what we are standing
on or in. There are many wheres and whens
in a site. Awareness of the assumed bound-
aries and of the contingencies in the field
of our view can lead to a more integrated
approach to working in any place. I try to
intensify awareness of the different aspects
of time that allow us to experience a place.
My recent project, Once Was, is an
example. I was working with a site built
in the early 1930s. The title reflects
the changes: once was an estate, once was
a farm, once was a forest. A 30-by-60-foot
swimming pool with an adjacent pool house
had been built into a hillside. When the
estate was given to Abington Township in
the mid-60s, they filled the pool with bro-
ken concrete to prevent people falling into
it and boarded up the building. Then nature
took over. By the mid-90s, you could no longer tell that a pool had been there because
of tree and shrub growth and the soil built up by leaf duff. I wanted to reveal this natural
takeover by clearing the accumulated soil from the remains of the paving around the
pool so that the activity of the roots would become visible and frame the trees trans-
formation of the pool from its former flat emptiness to a green and growing vertical
woodland. The removed earth is piled in three places at the periphery to register its
accumulation in proportion to our clearing. On one mound, various plants have begun
to grow, but only on the side exposed to sun by our clearing, so the process of covering
is re-establishing itself.
46 Sculpture 32.1
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The Garden, 199397. Architectural debris from a burned-down 19th-century factory, regional stones, native
plants, and enameled steel historical photographs, 120 ft. wide x 80 ft. deep. Multiple views of project at
the Mattress Factory, Pittsburgh.
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SL: This does not sound like fast work.
WL: The clearing was very labor- and time-intensive (March through July), but
the duration helped me to understand and use other aspects of the site. I gradu-
ally realized there were other things I could uncover or recover, which led to the
poplar bark doors and to the clearing of part of the original bluestone path from
the road to the pavilion that overlooks the pool. The poplar bark for the pool
house doors came from a dead tree that was probably a sapling when the pool
was built. An interesting byproduct of the work was that my assistants and
I found that we had difficulty remembering the site before our interference.
Fortunately, I documented the process.
SL: Your projects get history, geology, landscape, and the viewer all vibrating
at once. What do you need to put into a site to get information back from it?
WL: Timespending prolonged time on the site is essential. If you dont know
the site in all its seasonal cycles, then you dont really know it. Since 1992,
I have done three projects at the Abington Art Center. Each project has informed
the next as I have become more immersed in the site.
The pace at which you work on something also alters the outcome. Before our
clearing of the bluestone path, a contractor who works for the AAC said, Oh, I
have a man you can hire with a bobcat, and in one day he can clear it all out.
But that kind of speed loses many parts of the site and sacrifices attention. Our
team at Abington removed a mammoth amount of soil overburden and plant
growth over a period of about five days. If this had been done with a bobcat,
we would never have been able to show the effects of
plant growth and decay on the path pavers because the
method of removal would have destroyed the evidence,
even prevented seeing that there was evidence.
SL: Does spending weeks and even seasons on the site
give you a particular insight into the place?
WL: If you have a long familiarity with the site, you see
how dust will always come, weeds will always come,
moss will be attacked by robins. Over the years, Ive
learned that decline and collapse can become opportu-
nity and structure. It is true of all sites that nothing
ever gets done. My mother used to say, A garden is a
job forever. There is no stasis in nature. Things either
require cyclical repetition (like weeding) or they
get undone by the forces of larger systems (like the
weather). No garden can ever be completed. No gar-
den can continue without attentive tending. I think
the intrinsic beauty and pathos of care and experience
of the site comes from that.
SL: In a way, this all deals with erosion.
WL: Yes, place is a condition of time. It may not be
whether our work leaves a mark, because that cannot
be avoided, but how aware we are of how that happens
and what it changes. A deer walks by once in the woods
and only another deer or a predator finds the trail. A
few deer repeat the journey, and there is a path because
the plants are inhibited by the repetition. A creek no
longer flows above ground because a city filled it with
waste. Erosion could be said to be the consequence
of too much familiarity.
Stacy Levy is an artist based in Philadelphia.
Top: time after time, a clearing (detail), 2006. Site rubble, cut trees, glass block, grass sod,
enameled steel photographs, gold paint, and acrylic stain, 8 x 20 x 90.5 ft. Above: Sorting the
Residue of Years (detail), 2009. Old estate tennis court and accumulated detritus (moss, leaves,
wood, and soil), 80-x-120-ft. site. Right: Drawing Dock Creek, 2008. Soccer field paint, white
wash, grass, blue shock cord, sod staples, and steel, 120 ft. long.
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David
Hendersons
BY BROOKE KAMIN RAPAPORT
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David Hendersons A History of Aviation-Part 2 circumvents the dominant
movements of postwar art. The soaring white fiberglass and Dacron installa-
tion, which filled an entire gallery, is neither conceptual nor politically driven.
It does not reference the gestural painting or sculpture of Abstract Expres-
sionism. Formally spare, it appears weightless, having shed the heavy theo-
ries of Minimalism. Nor does it have a narrative attached to it like much con-
temporary art. Instead, A History of Aviation-Part 2 relies on long-established
sculptural practice: addressing form, it requires viewers to circumnavigate its
three-dimensionality. The works essential presence is what compels the 55-
year-old Brooklyn artist. I dont feel like formalist work is over. Theres a lot
more territory to explore, he says.
Henderson is well aware that his work exists outside of current art trends:
I think, in a way, that Minimalism dug itself into a hole. It got to be more
and more reductive, reducing things down to an absolute. I think Ive come
through the other side of that. In discussing A History of Aviation-Part 2, he
affirms that formalism has remained significant to his practice. The pieces are
about very traditional sculptural issuesforms, space, volume, mass. So, in
that way, they do relate to Minimalism. But they arent particularly Minimalist,
theres too much going on. Over the last decades, Henderson, who received a
BA from Bard College in 1978 and an MFA from Columbia University in 1981,
has explored how geometric and organic form can reside in a particular space.
He has shown his work on the 13-acre site of the Reeves-Reed Arboretum in
Summit, New Jersey (2007), at the Richmond Center for Visual Arts at Western
Michigan University in Kalamazoo (2008), at Knoedler Gallerys Project Space in
New York (2008), and at galleries in Baltimore (2001) and Santa Fe (2010). In
2006, his 22-foot-tall Skylark was installed on the Brooklyn campus of Long Island
University, leaning comfortably against a wall. Henderson appears committed
to showing pieces outside of standard art world venues. A History of Aviation
debuted in 2010 at the Queensboro Community College Art Gallery, which,
though affiliated with the City University of New York, is miles from the Chelsea
or Williamsburg scene. Its second iteration was then installed at Smack Mellon,
a nonprofit space in the DUMBO section of Brooklyn that promotes the work of
under-recognized, mid-career artists. The indifference that Henderson meets
from big-time galleries has enabled him to adopt a phi-
losophy that disdains current art world obsessions.
His desire is to reach past art world viewers. The more
concerned with theory, concept, and art history that
the artwork becomes, the more limited and narrowly
focused the audience, he explains. Henderson is nei-
ther an art world insider nor an outsider artisthe
teeters somewhere between the two spheres.
Over the course of his career, Henderson has explored
various materials and diverse techniques. This ongoing
interest balances the focus of his day job; since 1990,
he has been a partner in an architectural metal fabri-
cating firm in Brooklyn. While decorative metalwork
panels and sleek stairways occupy him from nine to
five, his sculpture pushes beyond metal to incorporate
new materials and varied forms.
Likewise, Henderson might first diagram his forms
with a 3D-modeling program, but he doesnt allow
the technology to overwhelm the art: Although my
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Opposite: A History of Aviation-Part 2, 2011. Fiberglass, carbon fiber, foam, aluminum, and
Dacron, 25 x 20 x 36 ft. This page, left: Eole, 2010. Fiberglass, 24 x 19 x 22 in. Right: Skylark,
2006. Fiberglass, steel, and pigments, 22 x 6 x 10 ft.
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sculptures are the product of meticulous craftsmanship, slight irreg-
ularities humanize the geometry and are inherent in the intensely
hands-on methods by which they are made.
1
Foam, fiberglass, car-
bon fiber, epoxy resin, Dacron, aluminum, and plywood have all
found a home in Hendersons sculpture. Bronze, welded steel, and
marble hold no interest for him. His choice of materials is pragmatic
(the work has an economy of means; the materials, an economy of
necessity), but it is also more than that: lightweight materials form
a vision and premise for his work. I am interested in making things
that are extremely light, he says. You can split volume from mass.
If you can make the volume really light, it defies your expectations
of what its going to weigh. The weightlessness of sculpture raises
the question of how physical objects can pose as ethereal forms.
In Smack Mellons industrial-style space, Henderson created a com-
plete environment from an assembly of 25 large white elements.
50 Sculpture 32.1
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A History of Aviation-Part 2, 2011. Fiberglass, carbon fiber, foam, aluminum,
and Dacron, 25 x 20 x 36 ft.
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Smooth on one side and ribbed on the other,
the forms recall butterfly wings, with free-
standing sections delineated by ribs and
alluding to Hendersons interest in concep-
tualizing aerodynamics. His construction
method derives from the principles of light-
weight aircraftin fact, the work can be
installed and reinstalled with relative ease
by the artist and one assistant. He is fasci-
nated by the imagery of soaring space,
whether architectural or metaphorical. A
History of Aviation-Part 2 is based on the
Gothic fan vaulting in the nave and chancel
of Bath Abbey. In this design, which is
strongly associated with England, the ribs
extend upward from the columns and open
up like a fan to support the structure. Hen-
derson visited Bath Abbey in 2006 and found
a place where the spirit could soar. I am
interested in the spirit of space. I wanted
to see what could happen if you took those
same shapes out of a specifically religious
context to see if they have the same physi-
cal, visceral reaction. I am interested in
that gut reaction. Visitors had to negotiate
their way through A History of Aviation-Part
2 or walk around its perimeter. The project
commanded the gallery much like the
vaults command the space of Bath Abbey.
In a sense, viewers become performers on
a stage set when they enter this installation.
2
Stage sets by major American artists have
a lauded history in 20th- and 21st-century
design. Isamu Noguchi, Alexander Calder,
Erik Satie, and David Hockney created sets;
and William Kentridge designed the sets for
a recent Metropolitan Opera production. But
Hendersons set isnt for professional per-
formers. Instead, ordinary people, simply
by passing through the work, enter into a
duet between human and sculptural form.
Henderson didnt conceive of the piece
as a stage set, but he concedes that if you
look at it real close, its kind of rough, like a
stage set. There are no specified directions
for viewers to take. I want people to have
a physical response to it, he says. People
go different ways. Some go to the end.
Others tend to stay in the middle to see
what it feels like in there. Inside the mid-
dle ground formed by these white wings,
visitors inhabit a space where concept, form,
and materials unite to create a work of aspi-
ration and ascension.
Notes
1
David Henderson, exhibition catalogue, James W. and Lois I. Richmond Center for the Visual Arts, Western Michigan University, Kalamazoo, Michigan,
2008, p. 11.
2
Thanks to my colleague, Charlotta Kotik, with whom I discussed the idea of Hendersons work as a stage set.
Brooke Kamin Rapaport is a writer and curator based in New York.
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A History of Aviation-Part 2, 2011. 2 details of installation.
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Inspired by the Faroe Islands
1konuuk PAtuksson
BY CHRISTINE TEMIN
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The birds were soon to migrate across the
Atlantic, from the village of Kirkjub on
Streymoy Island to North Americatheir
destination, the Kennedy Center in Washing-
ton, DC. Created by Faroese sculptor Trndur
Patursson, these birds are made of glass.
One hundred of them make up the flock,
many with a wingspan over six feet, and
they will fly in the Kennedy Center lobby
as the focal point of Nordic Cool 2013,
an arts festival on view from February 19
through March 17, 2013.
In late October, more than 60 birds were
already filling Paturssons studio, a humble
building adjoining his house, which has the
traditional grass roof of Faroe buildings
and a stunning view looking over the water
to other islands, with cliffs, waterfalls,
and grazing sheep. Paturssons people have
lived on and farmed this land for all of
its recorded history. He built the house
himself, and part of it is made of driftwood,
which the Faroese have used for over 1,000
years because there arent any trees on
these windswept islands. The birds in Paturs-
sons studio look a bit like the gulls flying
outside, only more fanciful. He mentions
the albatross, but not in the metaphorical
sense of Coleridges poem. Patursson means
the actual bird, though he says, For me, its
not important what bird theyre based on.
Born in Kirkjub, where he and his
extended family still live, Patursson studied
art in Norway and Denmark and also trained
as a blacksmith, an education that has come
in handy in various sculpture projects. Glass
is his principal medium these days, but
he has done a large stainless steel whale,
diving head first, for Chinas Changchun
World Sculpture Park and something resem-
bling Stonehenge on the grounds of the
Nordic House, a cultural center on Strey-
moy. He found the huge stones in the
hills and placed them to control light and
shadow, depending on season, weather,
and time of day. They echo the shapes of
the surrounding cliffs.
The inhabitants of the Faroes (18 islands
with a population of 48,000) consider them-
selves to be a separate country, though
officially they are a Danish colony. There
is a 50/50 split over the question of seces-
sion. Patursson is in favor. Fiercely inde-
pendent, he has served as a sketch artist
on voyages captained by the noted adventurer Tim Severin, including one in a leather
boat, which lasted for several very uncomfortable, but exciting, months. The sea is
Paturssons natural element.
There is a modest Faroe Islands Art Museum on Streymoy, where Paturssons work is
on permanent view. A breathtaking, 10-panel, stained glass screen depicts whales, an
important part of Faroese culture and a traditional food. (Its controversial whether they
should be killed.) Paturssons screen is semi-abstract. You have to look for the whales,
but once you find them, theyre thrashing and smashing. The palette consists of deep
aquatic blues, as well as black, which Patursson uses liberally, perhaps out of fear that
his work will appear too attractive and not bold enough without it. Glass is a seductive
medium, and he doesnt want to take the easy way out.
Patursson has also installed an entire stained glass room in the museum, with a glass
ceiling, walls, and mirrored floor. Visitors put on fabric slippers to enter. The ceiling is
low and claustrophobic, laced with swirling lines; the walls are filled with bubbling
blacks. The effect makes you feel like youre drowning.
Opposite: Cosmic Blue, 2010. Painted glass, detail of installation. This page, top: Glass birds, 2008.
Painted glass, view of installation at Anker Fjord Hospice. Above: Glass birds for the Kennedy Center,
2012. Painted glass, detail of work with 100 elements.
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Paturssons work doesnt require the seren-
ity of a museum. He has also designed
a three-story stained glass tower inside
a bustling shopping mall in Trshavn, the
Faroes capital. Reds, greens, purples,
and, of course, blacks make it come to
life. Stained glass illustrates the light in
the Faroe Islands, he says, the light off
the water. His versatility seems endless.
He created the lighting for the 2006 Noroya
Tunnel, which connects the islands of
Boroy and Eysturoy. As is often the case
with ambitious public art, the piece wasnt
in top shape when I visited because it
hadnt been properly maintained. Much
of the lighting was out, but the idea was
clear. Green, blue, and red lights flood
the cavernous space hewn out of rugged
rocks. The tunnel runs for more than six
kilometers, and Paturssons contribution
is its only interesting aspect. Commuters
must be very grateful.
The tiny hamlet of Gta on Eysturoy
hosts a modern church built when the
congregation outgrew its smaller building.
The new one, consecrated in 1995, seats only 270, but in its own way, it is majestic. The
Faroese are intensely religious. Fishing is their main source of income, and there are still
disasters at sea. Before the tunnels and bridges connecting the islands were built, the
gravely ill just died because no doctor could get to them in time. Religion is still a way
to navigate death. Life is scary, Patursson says, the sea and its power are scary.
In this little church, he designed the stained glass windows, the altar railing, the pulpit,
the baptismal font, and the lighting fixtures. The dominant color is ultramarine blue, and
the imagery and numerology are governed by the Bible. The 12 sconces on the walls, each
ornamented with a cross, refer to the 12 Apostles. The baptismal font is seven-sided, not
only for the days of the week, but also for the Christian significance of seven. The font
stands on a metal structure, made by Patursson, that resembles tree branches. The
pulpit, with its tumultuous blues, looks like the sea. The space culminates in a huge,
stained glass window with abstracted imagery. Figures fill the bottom register; the mid-
54 Sculpture 32.1
The Noroya Tunnel, 2006. LED light installation
in the tunnel connecting the islands of Boroy
and Eysturoy.
The Cosmic Room, 2000. Painted glass, detail of
installation at the Randers Art Museum. T
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dle is occupied by a boat, the means of
rescue; and, at the top, golden light
bathes a crucifixion scene with a benev-
olent savior rather than a suffering fig-
ure. Patursson doesnt even specify that
its Christ, just somebody you can trust.
The entire window is reflected by the
polished marble floor. While stained glass
in most European chapels, churches, and
cathedrals attempts to seal off the wor-
shipper from the outside, the church in
Gta allows the landscape in through
windows that offer views of grassy cliffs
and the sea.
Even at the age of 68, Patursson works
entirely alone, with occasional help from
his son, Brandur, who is also a sculptor. To
manufacture the birds, he slept in three-
hour shifts, so he could check on how they
were being cooked. The birds come in
nine sizes and postures. Some fly parallel
to the ground; others aim down. Pat-
ursson starts by cutting out the glass on
a flat table. Once the birds are cut, he
paints them. While the shapes are realis-
tic, the colors are not. He mixes his own
colors, diluting pigments with egg, water,
wine, or whatever other liquid is at hand.
He favors tempera, because it has more
light from inside than oil paint, and frets
that a red and gold bird may be too beau-
tiful. Painting involves many colors,
brushes, and sponges; the work is as care-
ful as calligraphy and as seemingly casual
as splashing. The birds cook on molds
that give them their distinctive sculptural
presence; the glass melts at 700 degrees
Celsius for two to three days. Once they
are out of the oven, Patursson drills holes
in them to accommodate the wires by
which they fly. He wants them to move in
whatever air currents are produced by
doors opening and closing. When com-
pleted, they will begin their journey
to America, securely packed in artist-built
crates, and not, Patursson hopes, on a
wing and a prayer.
Christine Temin is a writer based in
Boston.
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Two views of the Church of Gta, top: The Passion,
199194. Painted glass. Bottom: altar and pulpit,
199194. Painted glass.
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Zeke Mooress work interrogates the mass-produced object and the hand-crafted work of art.
Focusing on the detritus of contemporary life, he replicates dumpsters, cardboard boxes,
wooden pallets, pylons, and the leftovers of our modern industrial society in materials that
challenge and confound how we assign value and gauge aesthetic beauty. Meticulously
rendered in bronze and aluminum, Mooress work re-contextualizes the mundane through
materials and techniques usually associated with high art. Youll never look at the trash
in quite the same way again.
In an effort to elevate the everyday through painstaking practice, Moore rejects the
notion of factory-style art production and the machine-made, assembly-line practices of
artists like Jeff Koons. Using his labor and skill as a craftsperson, Moores pays homage to
proto-Modernists like Gustave Courbet, who depicted a world of traditional, back-breaking
labor at odds with the emerging world of mechanization. In a kind artistic alchemy, Moores
presents familiar objects transmuted by a celebration of technical skillmetaphorically
turning dross into gold.
His explorations delve into a wide range of subjects, drawn from personal experiences
that many of us pass over. A central strategy in his work involves the literal and figurative
recasting of mundane, commercially produced objects.
By ennobling these commonplace things, he plays with
the slippery relationships that connect utility, dispos-
ability, and value; he also toys with consumerism and
the fleeting engagement that we bring to bear on a
cardboard box and a gallery-approved piece of contem- T
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Turning Dross to Gold
Z M
BY CRAIG FRANCIS POWER
Above: Dumpster, 2010. Fabricated
and cast bronze, 84 x 54 x 38 in. Left:
Port-O-Potty, 2012. Nickel-plated, fab-
ricated steel and cast aluminum, 84
x 46 x 46 in.
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porary art. Moores explains: By
relying on industrial methods
of manufacturing to alter or
remove the function of a seem-
ingly unimportant mass-produced
object, I am able to subvert its
intentioned existence from one
of utility to cultural signifier.
If the early Modernists,
inspired by the writings of
Baudelaire, were obsessed with
the fleeting beauties of an
emerging industrial society,
then Moores can be seen as
their direct descendent. Like a
modern-day flneur, he is drawn
to the cast-off by-products of
our hegemonic global order just as Manet was drawn to the under-
belly of 19th-century society with its prostitutes, beggars, and indus-
trial advancements. If Manets Olympia elevates the common street-
walker to the status of Greek goddess, Mooress Cooler Column (a riff
on Brancusis Endless Column) elevates Styrofoam beer coolers to the
level of Platonic form. Mooress sense of context adds a further level
of significance: Cooler Column was created for the Thames Art Gal-
lery (a locus of high art), while the forms were fashioned from Styro-
foam coolers routinely used by local fishermen on the Thames (a site
of the everyday). A disposable vernacular shifts hierarchies, pro-
ducing a work intended to address both expert and casual audiences.
Dumpster (2010), a commercial garbage receptacle re-created in
bronze, encapsulates Mooress clever, ironic investigation into cul-
tural value. Originally installed in an urban alley, the work embraces
the proto-Modernist obsession with societys hidden spheres while
disrupting viewer expectations. By placing the work outside the
context of the art gallery, Moores provides an over-arching critique
of the highly codified world of contemporary art and simultaneously
pays homage to the history of public memorials. If conventional
public bronzes seek to celebrate some historical event or figure,
then Mooress work attempts to memorialize the utterly contem-
porary cast-off objects of modern society. Here again, we see the
art historical antecedents of his practice. Like Manet before him,
Moores straddles the nature of the ephemeral in contemporary life
with a nod to the eternal.
By removing an objects utilitarian function, Moores highlights
its cultural signification. The precious metal dumpster becomes an
icon by which Moores, the laborer, wryly critiques our devotion to
frivolous, easily discarded, and utterly disposable objects. It also
celebrates a labor-intensive process at odds with the functioning of
modern industrial society and operates as an emblem for an alien-
ated underclass, whether factory workers or not. In this way, Moores
identifies with a culture beyond the dominant orthodoxy, one that
embraces craftsmanship and rejects the ubiquitous, cheaply made
objects that define our day-to-day lives.
Mooress cardboard boxes also embody this approach. Recast in
bronze, their crumpled, intricate detailsthe dents, creases, and
foldsact as counterpoints to Warhols Brillo boxes, with their eas-
ily repeatable, fresh-from-the-production-line aesthetic. Mooress
interest in labor and its politics is evident here. For some, his boxes
may offer simple totems of the endless cycle of production/consump-
tion, a fast critique allowing us to see what we easily discard or
simply no longer notice. If this were all there was to it, then per-
haps Mooress works would be nothing more than clever one-lin-
ers, objects to get and then move on. But this is neither simple
Marxist critique, nor playful kitsch; instead, Moores offers a deeply
considered examination of the language and history of sculpture,
as well as its role in the cultural economy.
Craig Francis Power is an artist and writer based in eastern Canada.
Above: Milk Crates, 2007. Cast alu-
minum, 18 x 12 x 10.5 in. Right:
Cooler Column, 2009. Cast alu-
minum, 120 x 12 x 18 in. Below:
Boxes, 2010. Cast bronze, dimen-
sions variable.
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________________ _____________ ____________________
____________ ____________ ____________
_______________________
_________________
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____________________
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_________________
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____________ __________ ______________
Award Benefits for 2013 recipients:
Inclusion in a prominent article in the October
2013 issue of Sculpture magazine and on
www.sculpture.org
Opportunity to exhibit in the Fall/Winter Exhibition
at Grounds For Sculpture in Hamilton, NJ
Opportunity to participate in a traveling exhibition
Inclusion in Grounds For Sculpture Fall/Winter
Exhibition Catalogue
One-year ISC Membership
Exclusive opportunity to apply for a fully
sponsored international residency
Since my selection for the Outstanding Student
Achievement Award in 2006 My work
was featured and discussed in The New York
Times, Modern Painters Magazine, The Nation
and (of course) in Sculpture Magazine.
Adam Niklewicz, SUNY Purchase, 2006
Winning the award marked a significant
moment in my development, confirming
my commitment as an artist, and helping
establish my career here in the US, as I am
from Australia.
Timothy Horn, Massachusetts College of Art, 2003
Winning the Outstanding Student
Achievement Award from ISC was a huge
confidence builder for me and my work.
It was extremely validating to be taken that
seriously at the beginning of my career and
have the opportunity to travel... It was
definitely a defining moment in my path to
becoming a working artist.
Kate Carr, University of Iowa, 2003
Artwork shown created by the following artists (from left to
right): Reed Esslinger; Adriana Corral; Dylan Botelho; Amber
Whiting; Christopher Torrez; Kyle Petreycik;
Teresa Carlesimo
An annual juried
competition for graduate
and undergraduate
students working in the
realm of contemporary
sculpture
Nomination Form Due:
March 25, 2013
Membership Registration:
March 18, 2013
Students Online Submission:
April 15, 2013
For qualification information and online application visit www.sculpture.org, email studentawards@sculpture.org, or call 609.689.1051 ext. 305
2013
Outstanding
Student Achievement
Awards
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Ntw osK
Bharti Kher
Hauser & Wirth
Born in London, living in Delhi for 20
years, Bharti Kher creates powerful
conceptual works that draw on differ-
ent aspects of her personal experi-
ence. Often multivalent in presenta-
tion, her symbolic, sometimes alle-
gorical sculptures incorporate old
and new themes, enlarging myth
and legend through visual tropes
that engage our freer speculations.
The title of her recent show, The
hot winds that blow from the West,
refers to the intensely hot winds that
cross North India and Pakistan during
the summer. Kher sees these winds,
which originate in places of power
from the last century, as lacking in
force and, to some extent, in ethical
value. Her constructions support
a female mythology of considerable
imagination, most visible in |e me
ene| (2011), a cast fiberglass figure
characterized by Kher as an urban
witch, though there is also a connec-
tion to the Hindu goddess Dakini,
known as the materialization of
female spiritual force. To some
extent, Kher is putting out an epic
version of herself, freeing not only
herself, but also other women whose
search for freedom takes them into
the realms of mythic imagination.
|e meene| literalizes Khers
impulse toward a larger-than-life
expressiveness. The figure, who lifts
her right leg with one arm while
holding a wooden pitchfork in the
other, is an exposed goddessher
sex is on view, and a stone lingam
emerges from the top of her head.
|e meene| reminds us of the will-
ful power of female Hindu deities,
goddesses of destruction as well as
life. In the more conceptual |e.ec|
||e e:|e| ||c| ,co ee| (2011), 27
shattered mirrors in frames tilt slight-
ly downward to make sure that the
viewer is included in the reflection.
The point, here, has to do with the
failure of vanity. Perhaps the refer-
ence is to Narcissus, who fell in love
with his reflection in a pool. At the
same time, the work makes an angry
protest against the stereotype of
female vanity, though the message
is universal.
|e |c| u|no ||c| ||cu ||cm ||e
He| (2011) consists of 131 old radia-
tors, found in the U.S., assembled in
India, and then returned to New York
for viewing. Stacked in a cube, the
heaters have been divested of their
purpose and take on new associa-
tions; their flaking paint turns them
into decaying carcasses. This work
also creates a powerful abstraction,
asserting the Minimalist cube with
components that began as familiar
household fixtures.
reviews
Bharti Kher, The messenger, 2011.
Fiberglass, wooden rake, sari, and
resin, 188 x 136 x 84 cm.
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68 Sculpture 32.1
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/ ||ne |||co| c:e cno ||me
(2011)an antique wooden staircase
some 17 feet longfuses the famil-
iar and the allusive into an ambigu-
ous new whole. The sperm-like forms
that swarm across it in dense curling
movements are made of ||no|,
the third eye worn by Hindus. What,
then, are these shapes exactly?
Sperm would inevitably suggest eroti-
cism, while bindis indicate a drive
toward the spiritual. Maybe both
readings are true. Indeed, the entire
form is a conundrum, with the stairs
ending at the ceiling. Like all of
Khers work, this stairway to nowhere
conjures memorable psychic opposi-
tion and mystery from the simplest
of materials.
|cnc||cn 6ccomcn
SAW IsAWct sco
David Hare
Weinstein Gallery
The Weinstein Gallery is to be com-
mended for bringing attention to
American artists who were close to
the Surrealist movement, including
Enrique Donati, Gordon Onslow Ford,
Jimmy Ernst, and David Hare. In
todays media-drenched culture, our
recall of artists is as short-lived as
our attention to political events, and
Hare has been out of view for too
long. A major bridge between the
Surrealists in exile in New York and
what we know as the New York
School, he was also an innovative
sculptor who produced singular work
based on what Sartre called emo-
tional imagery. In 1944, when Hare
had a solo show at Peggy Guggen-
heims Art of this Century Gallery,
Howard Putzel described him in the
catalogue as the best sculptor since
Giacometti, Calder, and Moore. In
1946, Hare, along with Noguchi, was
included in the historic Museum
of Modern Art exhibition, Fourteen
Americans; two years later, Sartre
wrote the catalogue essay for Hares
show at the Kootz Gallery. In one
of the first commissions given to a
Modernist artist, the New York-based
Uris Company selected Hare to create
a 40-foot-high bronze sculpture for its
headquarters on Third Avenue (1958).
In 1975, art historian Wayne Ander-
sen called Hare the most authentic
Surrealist sculptor America has pro-
duced.
Hare started as a photographer.
He was commissioned by the Amer-
ican Museum of Natural History to
shoot documentary photographs of
the Pueblo Indians, and in 1941, he
had a show of color photos at
the Julien Levi Gallery in New York,
where the Surrealists exhibited.
They felt that Hares sensibility was
close to theirs, and a year later,
Andr Breton appointed him to
share the editorship of the
Surrealist magazine /// (Duchamp
and Max Ernst served as editorial
advisors). A prime link to the
Abstract Expressionists, Hare was
the sculptor in the Subjects of the
Artist school, which was founded
in 1946 by Baziotes, Rothko,
Motherwell, and Still and later
evolved into the Artists Club. The
late 1940s were a great moment
not just for American painting, but
also for sculpture: artists such as
Louise Bourgeois, Herbert Ferber,
Seymour Lipton, Louise Nevelson,
Noguchi, Jos de Rivera, Theodore
Roszak, and David Smith were
all employing new materials and
processes to create what should be
Above: Bharti Kher, Reveal the
secrets that you seek, 2011. 27 shat-
tered mirrors, wooden frames, and
bindis, dimensions variable. Far left:
Bharti Kher, A line through space
and time, 2011. Wood, paint, and
bindis, 551.2 x 97.8 cm. Left: Bharti
Kher, The hot winds that blow from
the West, 2011. 131 radiators, 195
x 264 x 254 cm.
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called The New American Sculp-
ture.
Like the Surrealists, Hare explored
the unconscious and virtual auto-
matism in his early work. Largely
self-taught as a sculptor, he worked
with many techniques and used
steel, wax, clay, bronze, sand, and
cement. At times, he would spot-
weld the metals to let the process
itself determine the final outcome.
Like the Surrealists and the Action
painters, he relied on what D.H.
Lawrence called instinctive intu-
ition. Hares sculptures live in a
world between representation and
abstraction. |cn u||| |cc (1948),
in gesso and plaster, can be
described as a variation on a theme
of curves and circles. Hare also rein-
forced the tradition of modern
sculpture: |cn |onn|n (1954), for
example, relates to Rodins Hc|||n
|cn (1877), in which the power of
balanced movement achieves high
drama, and to Boccionis |n|oe
|c|m c| tcn||no||, |n c:e (1917),
in which the figure surges forward
with pounding rhythm. Hare takes
his speeding figure a step further,
melting and piercing the bronze
with a blowtorch to attain an arrow-
like push of dynamic energy.
|e|e| e|
8os1oW
Nancy Selvage
Boston Sculptors Gallery
The retinal dazzle of Op Art came
and went decades agoas with
many fads, it caught the eye, and
then there seemed little more to
say. But here it is again, mobile and
in three dimensions, in the metal
work of Nancy Selvage. This time, it
appears to have many more possi-
bilities. Selvages medium of choice
is perforated aluminum screening,
variously used for filters, vents,
acoustic panels, and guardrails.
Unlike the color theorists behind
two-dimensional Op Art, Selvage
works in black and white, but her
visual tricks are even more dynamic.
With carefully calculated spacing,
she layers screening to create moir
effects. Shifting perspectives reveal
illusive, and elusive, ephemeral
motifs. As the viewer changes loca-
tion (or as the mobile moves), pat-
terns shift and segue into bulls-
eyes, ripples, polka dots, pinstripes,
tweed patterns, tiny soccer balls, or
rows of stars. LED lights, carefully
positioned within most of the
pieces, are themselves visually frag-
mented by screening.
Two outsized works dominated
Selvages recent show. |c.||c||cn
(not a typoits meant to suggest
the unexplained navigational abili-
ties of migrating creatures) is a
thunderous wall piece, perhaps a
whale, perhaps a bird, intensely
subtle and throbbing with varia-
tions. ||c|c||||c, the only mobile
in the show, may be read as a moth
or butterfly; because it moves, its
optical pulsations are a little harder
to pin down. A quarter-scale version
is somehow more easily apprehend-
ed. Scaling these sculptures up
or down is tricky; their visual effects
depend on carefully calculated spac-
ing, flex, and angles.
Alongside the big pieces, Selvage
displayed sculptural lamps made
Left: David Hare, Man Running, 1954.
Bronze and welded steel on wood
base, 22 x 31 x 11 in. Below: Nancy
Selvage, Navigration, 2012. Per-
forated aluminum, paint, and light,
11 x 18.5 x 5.75 ft.
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70 Sculpture 32.1
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from the scraps left over after she
cuts out larger shapes. Unlike her
carefully planned, large-scale sculp-
tures, these smaller works depend
on happy accident. In many cases,
her industrial medium is softened
by botanical shapes and creative
tweaks. The metallic leaves of
|co| contain a green glass center,
an organic shape that flickers with
neon gas. Bent like rising flames,
larger blade-shapes encasing a light
produce |,|c. Theres considerable
whimsy in ||c|c||c|:, as twisting
metal rises to encircle a 15-inch
globe light suggestive of a sun-
flower within its corolla. These
pieces, which exude a certain mid-
20th-century, modern art look,
seldom offer the optical nuances of
the larger works.
Selvage recently won a commis-
sion to create a very large public
artwork for the city of Lowell,
Massachusetts, renowned for the
canals that ran its spinning mills
two centuries ago. Her medium
will likely be ideal for the rigors of
the weather, but it remains to be
discovered whether her visual fun-
house will translate to outdoor
light.
|c||, tc||c:|
lt WcotW, MAssAcMust11s
Julianne Swartz
deCordova Sculpture Park and
Museum
Is it possible for an exhibition that
includes blocks of cast cement to be
too subtle? In her retrospective
How Deep Is Your, Julianne Swartz
worked primarily with gossamer,
mirrors, sound, clockworks, and mag-
nets, in addition to cement. It was
not an installation for the hurried
visitor, nor for the hard of hearing
or for those with difficulty seeing.
Some of the works were almost
invisible and/or inaudible. Yet close
attention revealed an art of audacity,
inventiveness, and wit.
Entering the deCordova, one had
the option of ascending the stairs
or using the elevator, which offered
two extremely varied introductions
to Swartzs show. A sky-blue pipe
placed overhead ran up the stairs
but unless you had a coat to hang
up, you might not have discovered
that the pipe originated behind a
door, opened just enough to allow
a glimpse of |c|ce:ce, a fun-
house mirror reflecting red and blue
disco lights and red machinery of
unknown purpose.
Swartzs challenges to the senses
trumped visual aesthetics at every
turn. |cc offered a prime example,
its 40 speakers and multicolored
wires tangled into a wall-high visual
mess. For those who sat and lis-
tened, however, it emitted a compo-
sition worthy of Steve Reicha 20-
minute exercise in identifying
a stream of auditory stimuli, from
cricket chirps, knocks, thumps, frog
song, whispered words, guitar tun-
ings, and whistling to a nasal chant,
cowbells, atonal humming, pings,
bird chirps, gurgling water, the Early
Warning System tone, perhaps
a xylophone, and a steel drum. The
blue pipe did not lead to this room,
nor to the one containing three
light and lens pieces. Those were
serendipitous discoveries. |cocu
|coe, with drawings ever so faintly
projected on the white wall, was
easiest to overlook.
The blue pipe (passing Swartzs
remarkable digital chromogenic
prints of landscapes refracted
through bubbles and water drops)
did lead into the main gallery. Two
clear sections contained tiny speak-
ers where the pipe leaked music, one
of many details for the ultra-obser-
vant. Overhead, a knot in the pipe
revealed the artists whimsical bent.
The show grouped Swartzs work
by period. The diaphanous /|| 3|ec||,
from the Hope series, consisted of
two irregular, white ovals drawn in
space. It would be easy to assume
that they were made of wire, but
not so: silk fiber, feathers, and quills
were also incorporated. In the witty
0||c:|e, a cement block holding up
a wire filament led a semi-deflated
form along in a circle, obliging it
on every lap to struggle in Sisyphean
fashion over a little rocky barrier.
At first glance, |ecn resembled a
curved rod of Ellsworth Kelly-like
simplicity propped against a wall;
but it didnt touch at allits sus-
pended placement was maintained
by carefully calculated, magnetic
repulsion.
Adventurous visitors stuck their
heads into the blue bell at the end
of the pipe to hear the song How
Deep Is Your Love (faint and far
away, as if from another world) or
Above: Julianne Swartz, Surrogate
(JS), Surrogate (KRL), Surrogate (ARL),
2012. Cement, mica, and clock move-
ments, 4072 x 1724 x 814 in. Left:
Julianne Swartz, How Deep Is Your,
2012. Plastic, Plexiglas, and PVC tub-
ing, CD player, funnel, mirror, LED
lights, and 2-channel soundtrack,
dimensions variable.
sculpture
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opened the carefully crafted box
titled 0en to hear murmurs of I
love you. Similar whispered affirma-
tions could theoretically be heard
from the lobby couch, but ambient
conversations drowned them out.
Those who used the elevator stepped
into the caress of yellow light and
soft multilingual voices, intoning,
Youre all right. Its okay.
|c||, tc||c:|
Ntw osK
John Chamberlain
Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum
Freestanding sculptures and wall
pieces by John Chamberlain filled
the Guggenheim Museums four
floors last spring, offering viewers
a posthumous survey of the artists
crumpled steel and crushed metal
sculptures from the past 40 years.
His unique approach to sculpture
began in 1957, when he took mater-
ial from an antique car belonging to
Larry Rivers and drove over it, as he
told Julie Sylvester in a 1991 inter-
view published in a Pace Gallery cat-
alogue. Chamberlain then began
selecting pieces from junkyards and
body shops and subjecting them to
a variety of tools, including a slicer,
a steel-cutting chisel, and an acety-
lene torch. Credited with translating
Abstract Expressionism into three
dimensions, Chamberlain was often
discussed in relation to de Kooning,
his sculptural process compared to
gestural painting. The originality of
Chamberlains use of color, however,
is demonstrated by a black, brown,
and chrome pedestal sculpture made
in 1963 and later titled |c|||,n.
A pastel- colored companion piece,
|| |o:, ||n|, looks forward in its
construction to later, denser con-
structions.
Despite the importance of color,
from the early pastels (drawn from
typical auto paint of the day)
through the darker and more somber
tones of the later work, fit was at
the core of Chamberlains method
and aesthetic. He described the
meeting between the parts of his
works as a kind of handshake or as
a consummated sexual act, explain-
ing that where there are lots of
parts, you have to fit them together.
You have a fit, and you have a form,
and you have a color.
In his last years, Chamberlain
embarked on a new body of work
that included his largest and most
ambitious pieces. At the Guggen-
heim, his freestanding painted and
stainless steel sculptures from 1990
stood alongside |/H|||||/6/||
(2010), a painted, but mostly
chrome-plated and stainless steel
work. Chamberlain began decon-
structing Americas number one con-
sumer icon in the 50s when the
cult of the car was at its peak, but
his work retained its originality
throughout his career, even when
stripped of color. On the ground
floor of the museum, the anthropo-
morphic ||||\6||| H0 (2010) was
poised to take a giant step; while
outside, the almost 20-foot-high
t|/|\' (2011) demanded that
we acknowledge its scale.
tc||nne |c||n
Ntw osK
Kevin Francis Gray
Haunch of Venison
The pursuit of figurative sculpture
today occurs not without a sense of
dj vu; like figurative painting, rep-
resentational sculpture is hard put
to break out of tradition to reach
an exploratory, even experimental,
sense of the medium. But Kevin
Francis Grays recent work shows us
that a questioning, innovative sensi-
bility can still expand the range of
figurative art. Frequently relying on
a simple, yet transformative stylistic
decisiondrapingGray highlights
the figure and imbues it with a
bit of mystery. He works with a fairly
broad range of materials (bronze,
porcelain, and marble) and installs
his works in unusual ways. For
example, ue|.e t|cm|e| (2012)
consists of 12 undraped porcelain
heads arranged in rows and set
chest high on top of pedestals. In
this nicely installed show, each work
occupied a considerable amount
of space, enabling viewers to move
back and appreciate the pieces from
a distance.
Sculpture can trace its beginnings
to the memorialization of the dead,
and one senses that this purpose
is not so far from Grays intentions.
Above: John Chamberlain, SPHINX-
GRIN TWO, 2010. Aluminum, 490
x 420 x 370 cm. Right: Kevin Francis
Gray, Temporal Sitter, 2012. Patinated
bronze and Bardigilio marble, 89.9 x
89.9 x 169.9 cm.
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Entering the first room of the
gallery, viewers met the arresting
emc|c| |||e| (2012), made of
patinated bronze and marble.
Sitting with crossed legs and arms
extended across the lap, emc|c|
|||e| bears more than a superficial
resemblance to Asian sculptures
of the Buddha sitting in repose. The
drapery covering the body gives
interest to the figures outline,
emphasizing the slender torso, legs,
and arms. Even the head is covered
with folds of cloth. One can ques-
tion why the entire body has been
enveloped, but the choice is not
capricious. Neither excessive styliza-
tion nor eccentricity, the drapery
serves as a means of defining the
body in a new and interesting man-
ner. |ec., /|m (2012), which con-
sists of two bronze arms supported
by a flat wooden pedestal, realisti-
cally portrays these appendages
only to have the realism broken by
the golden sheen of the polished
bronze. It is a slightly macabre sight
to see arms end suddenly at the
elbow, but the abrupt cutoff gives
the piece its sculptural interest.
|e 3c||e||nc (2011), sculpted from
Carrara marble, is a tour de force
of technique. Transparent drapery
defines a standing, nude woman,
her breasts and belly visible under
the beautifully rendered cloth. The
head is particularly strong; the bal-
lerinas eyes look downward, imi-
tating the gravitas of a medieval
Christian saint. The technical skill
behind this work is remarkably
high, but it does not detract from
the pathos of the figures expres-
sion.
ue|.e t|cm|e|, portrait heads
of people who, we are informed, are
dealing with bipolarity and drug-
dependence, demonstrates Grays
command of porcelain. The overall
installation provokes discomfort,
and the individual expressions con-
vey uneasiness, despite the fact
that Gray has kept the sitters emo-
tions in check. For me, ue|.e
t|cm|e| was proof that a figura-
tive approach to art can remain
alive, perhaps because, in this case,
Gray knew his subjects well. The
combination of emotional insight
and technical ability is, of course,
not newone thinks of Rodinbut
Gray is a contemporary master.
|cnc||cn 6ccomcn
Ntw osK
Eve Ingalls
SOHO20 Chelsea
Eve Ingalls works out of a former
chicken coop in the Sourland
Mountains of New Jersey, with a vista
that could be mistaken for Vermont,
but thoughts of oil spills, hurricanes,
tsunamis, and other forms of environ-
mental destruction are never far
from her mind. Human manipulation
may be destroying the earth, but she
finds beauty in bringing it to the fore-
front of our attention.
A student of Josef Albers, Ingalls
was a painter for many years, but
at the turn of the millennium, she
moved away from the rectangle and
turned to sculpture. She discovered
cast paper and became intrigued
with how it collaborates as it dries
on the armature. It gives the feel-
ing of life that goes beyond me,
Ingalls has said.
|e|n u||| ||e /\| |ono|, the
largest work in her recent exhibition,
Out of Place and Time, was a show
in itself. My only quibble was that
it needed more space around it to
enable a longer view. Axis Mundi
refers to the vertical, spiritual axis
of humanity. A horizontal aluminum
plane at the base of the work was
cut out to suggest the tangled mass
of a mangrove swamp. The metal,
polished to a matte finish, glim-
mered like water, creating a pattern
on the floor and simultaneously cast-
ing a shadowIngalls loves to play
with shadow. From this base, rose
a vertical axis marked with notches,
the word sea at the bottom and
sky at the top. But someone had
been messing with this meter: a
stormy sea, spilling over with white
spume, presided over the top, held
up by scissor lifts.
The center of the gallery was
occupied by what looked to be the
remains of a wooden roof torn
Above: Kevin Francis Gray, Twelve
Chambers (detail), 2012. 12 porcelain
heads, brass, black marble, black
walnut, and steel stands, each bust:
15.75 x 6.25 x 6.25 in. Right: Eve
Ingalls, Drawing Back to the Pyramid,
2011. Handmade abaca paper, 65 x
134 x 173 in.
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asunder in a hurricane or tsunami.
What resembled raw wood stamped
with lot numbers, was actually cast
paper. The cedar shingles, too,
were individually made of paper,
each detailed with surface grain and
stained to reflect age. Like the
pages of a notebook, the shingles
offered a historical record of
the architecture. Their translucency
allowed viewers to look through
them and wonder what the inhabi-
tants might have felt during the
disaster. Will this shelter protect me?
Should I stay or should I go? The
irony is that the handmade effort
that went into this beautiful piece
of constructionit all fits without
hardwareis absent from the pre-
fab structures that fail in real disas-
ters.
Two works demonstrated Ingallss
interest in shadow. In each case,
suspended screening material,
plugged with black paper pulp, was
mounted eight inches from the wall
to create shadow drawings. The cast
shadows revealed birds fluttering
in a oil spill. Using visual poetry,
painstaking craftsmanship, and sub-
tle humor, Ingalls makes environ-
mental catastrophe look beautiful.
Now thats scary.
||ene |o|e
Ntw osK
Chiharu Shiota
Haunch of Venison
Chiharu Shiotas sculptures and
installations use basic materials
glass windows, black thread, found
objects such as a violin or a childs
dressin highly innovative ways.
Born in Japan, now based in Berlin,
Shiota makes use of an international
language of contemporary art, one
which serves to poetically enclose
information about objects whose
history can be felt if not touched. A
lyricist of dark song, she shows us
what can be done with the simplest
of meansfor example, a distressed
violin suspended within a web of
black thread. Her work embodies an
evocative attitude rather than a for-
malist aesthetic, leaving us to con-
sider the implications of a double
message that combines high-flown
spirituality with the dread that
accompanies doom. The juxtaposi-
tion of ideas and feelings may be
eccentric, but the results are remark-
able for their emotional tenacity,
making the 40-year-old artist some-
one to watch as she enactsShiota
is also a performance artist
her terms of presence and absence.
0||e| |oe (2012), a very large
installation of variable dimensions,
consists entirely of glass windows
collected from abandoned buildings
and other disused sites in East
Berlin. In this setting, the circle of
windows, two or three deep, rose
as high as the skylight; a tail of win-
dows followed, and an opening
allowed viewers to enter the semi-
enclosed space. The discarded win-
dows transformed the gallery into
something close to sacred. As a con-
sequence, scratches and other signs
of use took on poetic meaning, show-
ing how peoples lives have affected
the surface (and depths) of the
frames. An awed melancholy accom-
panied the experience, fueled by
these lost or forgotten impressions.
The overall experience was what
counted: the implications of the
allegory are necessarily imprecise
although the poetry is strong
enough to withstand the charge of
vagueness. Viewers felt the absence
of those who used the windows.
The State of Being series, in
which Shiota encloses objects within
complex interweavings of black
thread, also works as a poetry linked
to mortal states. In one piece, a
violin without strings is held in sus-
pension; one seems to be witness-
ing the objectification of music.
Another work of black thread sur-
rounding a dress looks like a mem-
orial environment for a recently
deceased girldeath and sadness
Above: Eve Ingalls, Messing with
the Axis Mundi, 2012. Aluminum,
handmade paper, and pigment, 9.5
x 9.5 x 9.5 ft. Right: Chiharu Shiota,
Reflection of the Past, 2012. Black
thread, antique mirror, and glass,
installation view.
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accompany much of Shiotas work.
In |e||e:||cn c| ||e |c| (2012), the
thread, arranged so that it held
a corner of the gallery, encased an
antique mirror and glass. Here, as
elsewhere, we are meant to come
across physical traces of memory,
the encircling black yarn acting like
a pervasive shadow or impending
mortality. Shiota is too young to
yield to predictions of her own death,
but it seems as if she were using
the event as a platform for medita-
tions on the human predicament.
The work rejects easy comfort in
favor of a lyricism stripped of beau-
ty, leaving beauty and deathand
our awareness of thembehind.
|cnc||cn 6ccomcn
Ntw osK
Richard Van Buren
Gary Snyder Gallery
Two mid-size rooms barely contained
the luminous effect generated by
Richard Van Burens new wall and
floor sculptures. Spaciously dis-
played, the sinuous, winding forms
all delighted the eye like brightly
colored jewels and enticed with
highly ornate surfaces coated in an
array of delicate hues studded with
shells. The extravagant surfaces
might surprise someone familiar with
the artists work from the late 60s
and early 70s. During that time, Van
Buren was known for large-scale,
irregularly shaped, plywood and
fiberglass sculptures exemplified by
||ee ||cn (1966), which was includ-
ed in Primary Structures, the
Jewish Museums landmark exhibi-
tion of Minimalism. He also created
poured, pigmented resin and fiber-
glass pieces such as |c| |cee|
(1972) that pushed the boundaries
between painting and sculpture like
similar work by Lynda Benglis. This
new work may depart dramatically
from reductive austerity and
the gestalt of single shapes, but Van
Burens driving interest in making
light and color manifest through
material and space has not altered.
Two large-scale pieces, Hc|||n
u||| 6c||| (2011) and 3c|||:e|||
|e.ene (2011), build on these earlier
formal concerns through a new
attention to movement. The inviting,
but also slightly threatening Hc||
|n u||| 6c||| cut 20 feet across
the gallery to draw viewers into the
room. Its sea-foam green and icy
blue serpentine form, tipped by
sharply halved, gold-painted nautilus
shells, unfurled like the shed skin of
a reptile. Similarly, the shimmering
relief 3c|||:e||| |e.ene, made
up of iridescent rose, lilac, char-
treuse, and blue hues with gold shells
resembling closed flower buds,
stretched some 14 feet across the
wall like a fossilized coral reef. Here,
Van Buren refashions Botticellis deli-
cately rendered mythological world
into an algae-like formation whose
irradiated, heavily textured surface
suggests a toxic spill rather than a
harmonious balance between man
and nature.
Smaller-scale wall pieces such as
|o|c |cn:e (2011), |coe 3|o||
(2010), and 3c|,c |eo (2011)
allowed closer inspection of Van
Burens materials. All are construct-
ed from thermoplastic molded into
lattice-like shapes, which are then
knitted together to create irregular
clusters coated with a metallic
acrylic paint. As light filters through
the porous filigree, web-like shad-
ows spill over onto the walls, there-
by adding to their expansive effect
and animated presence.
Allusions to water and nautical
life abound in Van Burens titles and
the forms themselves, propelled
no doubt by his move from New York
City to coastal Maine in the early
1980s and more recent visits to
Ghana and Cambodia. The relief
3c|cm|cn (2010) references the
Cambodian city: its twisting and
curving leaf-like shape, studded with
smooth, gold-painted volute shells
and silvery, sharp-pointed shells,
shifts from spice-pepper reds and
apricot oranges to a mottled, mar-
bleized pattern of green. |omcc|
Left: Chiharu Shiota, Other Side,
2012. Windows collected from East
Berlin and antique chair, installation
view. Below: Richard Van Buren, Bat-
ambang, 2010. Thermoplastic, acrylic
paint, and shells, 21 x 43 x 27 in.
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(2010) and c|c|o| (2010), named
for two cities in Ghana, are studded
with horn-shaped ivory shells and
variegated white and ultramarine
volutes respectively. Their arcing,
curvilinear forms make tangible the
manner in which reflected light
dances off surfaces.
Van Burens exploration of light,
color, and space connects these
flamboyant pieces to his previous
work. His quest to manipulate
light and explore the intersection
between the sculptural and the nat-
ural has also led him to explore
rhythm and sequential movement.
This new work makes additional
links between nature and artifice,
eloquently translating Paul Klees
famous phrase to take a line for a
walk into a lively and effervescent,
choreographed three-dimensional
statement.
|c||n |e|en|e|o
Ntw osK
2012 Whitney Biennial
Whitney Museum of American Art
The 2012 Whitney Biennial was a
modest affair. Whether by choice or
necessity, this economy of means
resulted in a refreshingly accessible
exhibition with a personal, DIY aes-
thetic, one that acknowledged the
downsized ambitions and reduced
funding of the Great Recession
while remaining intent on taking the
pulse of the contemporary art
world. With selected artists num-
bering around 50, curators Elizabeth
Sussman and Jay Sanders accented
the hybrid, collective, and expanded
parameters of current art practice
by including performance, dance,
and theater along with installations,
painting, and sculpture.
Dissolving boundaries between
mediums, exhibition spaces, artists,
and the public, the biennial became
a container for the uncontainable.
The Whitneys landmarked Marcel
Breuer building was transformed
into a single large-scale installation
that deconstructed its high Modern-
ist aesthetic by literally taking down
the walls from within. One whole
floor was given over to performance;
in the first week, Sarah Michelson
choreographed a dance on the
Breuer buildings ground plan. Other
floors presented installations that
became backdrops for performances
over the course of the shows run
or shows within the showfor
instance, a mini-display of the work
of Forrest Bess (191177) curated by
Robert Gober and a three-walled
space covered with patterned velvet
designed by Nick Mauss that includ-
ed sculptures and paintings from
the Whitney collection. Dawn Kasper,
who moved her whole studio into
the museum, was her own object
on display.
Many of the collaborations expand-
ed parametersthe Texas-based
band Red Krayola, for instance,
joined with the British Art and Lan-
guage group to compose an opera
and book drawn from their interac-
tion with the public through a
Skype portal; Jason and Alice Hall
Moran, teaming up with Joan Jonas,
Simone Leigh, Liz Magic Laser,
Glenn Ligon, Kara Walker, and Mau-
rice Berger, performed a live music
and mixed-media installation
(3||||); and Oscar Tuazons chain-
link fence and metal sculpture
in the lobby served as an industrial-
themed runway for a K8 Hardy fash-
ion show. Theatrical, time-based,
and evanescent, these collabora-
tions argued for the inclusive and
expanded scope of sculpture, a role
that, while dematerializing the
object, sought to entice viewers to
return again and again to see what
might happen next. Intimacy was in,
and spectacle was out. Rooms once
filled with large-scale projections
and pulsating music were replaced
by Lucy Ravens player piano inter-
Above: Installation view of Whitney
Biennial, with Sam Lewitt, Fluid
Employment, 2012; ferromagnetic
liquid poured bi-weekly over plastic.
Right: Oscar Tuazon, For Hire, 2012.
Mixed media, from the Whitney
Biennial.
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acting with a random digital feed,
Lutz Bachers pipe organ emitting
celestial sounds, and Werner Her-
zogs moving meditation on Hercules
Segerss etchings.
Promoting the organic and experi-
ential, a number of pieces accented
process over product. Sam Lewitts
floor-hugging ||o|o |m|c,men|
might have looked like an abject Carl
Andre, but its strange organisms ris-
ing from the primal ooze (created by
pouring ferromagnetic liquid over
magnetic elements) conjured an
alchemical brew. Similarly, Vincent
Fecteaus cast cement and resin clay
sculptures deployed folded and
wrapped forms and multiple perspec-
tives to celebrate mutability and
growth. Cameron Crawford also
focused attention on fabrication; his
fragmentary sculptures resembling
screens or architectural structures
appeared flimsy, insubstantial, and
without purpose, fitting monu-
ments to the functionless labor of
art production. Tom Thayer filled a
corner with puppets, collages, and
musical instruments fashioned from
cardboard, string, wire, and tape.
Suspended among video screens and
paintings, his improvised environ-
ment promised transformation
through its rich mix of music, vision-
ary narrative, and fantasy. Equally
improvisational, K8 Hardys assem-
blages of photographs, shoes, wigs,
and clothing coyly evoked the inti-
macy of the closet, entangling view-
ers in a fluid dialogue between fet-
ishistic desire and commodity.
Reminiscent of art practices from
the 1970s that similarly accented
process, non-traditional materials,
and a personal, often self-reflective
approach, the participatory, provi-
sional exploration of the 2012
Biennial suggested that re-tooling
expectations to the fluid circum-
stances of the present might just
lead to art that is socially respon-
sive and transformative.
ocn tcnn|n
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Cathy Wilkes
Carnegie Museum of Art
Cathy Wilkes, who studied at the
Glasgow School of Art in the mid-
80s and then helped to fuel the
citys art scene in the 1990s, has
become known for enigmatic, some-
times poignant installations fabri-
cated from sculpted and appropriat-
ed found objects. In 2008, the
Belfast-born artist was nominated
for the Turner Prize, and in the sum-
mer of 2011, she had her first solo
museum exhibition in the U.S. at
the Aspen Art Museum. Her multi-
part show at the Carnegie Museum
of Art included a new sculpture, an
installation centered on three low-
to-the-ground tables holding miscel-
laneous items, and nine complex
paintings, which were incorporated
into the installation.
Over the past 20 years, Wilkes has
developed an idiosyncratic vocabu-
lary rooted in individual experience
and symbolism. Labor, loss, memo-
ry, and motherhood seem to be sug-
gested, but the presentations are
neither linear nor obvious; instead,
the subtlety of Wilkess melancholic
sensibility and her choice of materi-
als invite close scrutiny. There is noth-
ing flip hereeverything is delib-
erate and serves a purpose.
On entering the gallery, one
encountered two zombie-like male
figures staring off into space. Wear-
ing oversized suits and modified
British military caps from World War
I, the two life-size mannequins stood
in front of two long rectangular
tables covered with objects. Wilkes
subjected each figure to artistic
intervention, evident in their white
pasty faces and hollow black/blue
eyes; most disturbingly, these phan-
toms lacked hands, though they
appeared to function as guards pro-
tecting the weathered treasures on
the tables. Nothing explained the
purpose or value of these small
paintings, rusted industrial materi-
als, old atlases, and other assorted
objects, and no clear relationship
joined them together. A circular alu-
minum stand (just to the side of
the rearmost guard) added to the
confusion with its white mesh drap-
ery reminiscent of a bridal veil.
The most compelling element in
the show was the figure of a woman
bowed over a bucket, accompanied
by another table covered with
numerous items, including four paint-
ings, writings, pottery shards, a
Bible, a porcelain doll, and a black,
child-like figure. The womans worn
clothing plainly signified her status
as a manual laborer; the exact
Left and below: 2 views of Cathy
Wilkess untitled installation at the
Carnegie Museum of Art, 2011.
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nature of her actions in this con-
text, however, remained unex-
plainedshe appeared to be extri-
cating threads dusted with white
powder from a pile of debris. This
vignette gave off an atmosphere of
pain, tragedy, and loss, pervaded
by hints of domestic misfortune.
Because everything was fragmented
and nothing specific, one had the
impression of entering a sketch in
the artists notebook.
The amount of detail in this night-
marish display and the positioning
of the items required time to con-
template. Transforming the old and
forgotten into something new is not
unique, but Wilkess assemblages
challenge viewers to review miscel-
laneous objects with clandestine
connections to personal episodes.
Her work resonates as a psychologi-
cal portrait, one that blends loss,
reverence, and oddity.
||c|ne / ||n
MoW1stAt
Laura Santini
McCord Museum
Laura Santinis recent installation,
sited within an exhibition of Innu art,
consisted of a polar bear made from
oyster shells collected at Montreal
seafood restaurants. The project
began modestly enough as Santini
brought home a bag or two from
each restaurant visit. She wasnt sure
what would become of the shells,
but the pile grew and grew, until her
studio began to resemble an archae-
ological dig at an ancient Amerindian
site, complete with shellfish midden.
Santinis shells, however, were decon-
textualized, displaced, and eventually
given over to art. She used to gather
shells around Antigonish, Nova
Scotia, where her family spent the
summers. Later, she realized that oys-
ter and clam shells were no longer
to be found on the northern Atlantic
shoreline. With a gathering aware-
ness of the threat to polar bears from
melting polar ice, she finally decided
on her project for the McCord
Museum, which is not a contempo-
rary art museum but a heritage and
cultural anthropology collection.
Santini made the bears armature
from cotton, wool, metal net, wire,
and tree branches. She fashioned the
claws from boat cleats and a stain-
less steel plumbing clamp, while the
eyes and teeth are similar to those a
taxidermist might use. The base on
which the bear rests is marked with
what looks like a cattle brand of the
letters X, C, and T, with an image
of a tin can inserted between them.
We can thus read the title of the
installation\||t.
San Francisco-based WildAid,
<www.wildaid.org>, has used
Santinis sculpture for its Canadian
polar bear campaign. In Santinis
words, The polar bear is a powerful
symbol of the Arctic and its people.
The sculpture \||t was created to
raise awareness of the issue of extinc-
tion and the endangered situation of
the polar bear, the largest and most
powerful land carnivore, and the
small and often overlooked oyster,
once thriving along the Canadian
and American eastern seaboard and
now also threatened by climate
change and over-fishing.
|c|n | 6|cnoe
0sMAwA, tAWAbA
Micah Lexier and Kelly Mark
Robert McLaughlin Gallery
Words, numbers, and signatures
the hallmarks of the art world as it is
measuredformed the conceptual
basis of this show pairing works by
two Nova Scotia College of Art and
Design graduates. Like the two televi-
sion screens that face each other in
|e || (|||| 3c\; (2009), Micah
Lexier and Kelly Mark are conceptual
artists who complement each other
brilliantly. For instance, Marks rubber
stamps bear her signature, though
they are scribed by friends and then
reproduced. She uses these fakes to
authenticate her work. Lexiers signa-
ture stamps consist of 10 varied sign-
ings of his name printed as letter-
press cards. For both artists, ideas
Above: Laura Santini, XTINCT,
201112. Oyster shells, organic mat-
ter, metal net, wire, and wood, 84
x 290 x 244 cm. Below: Installation
view with (left) Kelly Mark, The Kiss
(Light Box), 2009, archival Duratrans
print mounted into aluminum light
box, 63.5 x 81.3 x 12.7 cm.; and
(right) Micah Lexier, Two Ways to
Make 2, 2000, white neon, 55.9 x
83.8 x 2.5 cm.
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of work and fabrication are
embedded in their projects.
Lexiers tc|n ||e:e (oen|||, nc oen|||;
(1997) plays on notions of value,
particularly that of art. The machine-
made coins have no markings on
their heads or their tails. The dentil
(an architects term for a raised edge)
can be found on only one side. At the
Bank of Montreals main office, Lexier
covered a wall with 20,000 specially
minted coins, each with a letter on it
spelling out Derek McCormacks short
story, I Am the Coin, about a coin
caught in a work of art <www.
iamthecoin.com>. Marks comple-
ment to Lexiers box of coins reinter-
prets the Biblical transformation of
Lots wife as a stack of 240 salt shak-
ers, rising up in 12 levels, with 20
shakers to each level. The title, c||
e||e ||||c| (/|c\ :oo |||||cn;
(1997), references how many grains
of salt are believed to be in the
installation.
Lexiers / ||no|e c| |, |me
(|e:em|e| ::, :)), oo!)oo,o; is
part of an ongoing series in which
original ink or pencil drawings are
completed in one minute. Then,
another kind of factory-produced art
is made from the originals using a
water-cut metal process. This distanc-
ing of the personal from the final art
object distinguishes much of Lexiers
and Marks production. The original
is nothing significant to speak of, but
when it is consecrated by process,
it becomes conceptually weighted,
subject to historical or critical reinter-
pretation, re-evaluation, misinterpre-
tation, and misevaluation. Marks
||\cn (|n||| ||cu|n; (1997) is anoth-
er drawing dictated by concept:
when the pencil is worn out, the
drawing is complete. Organized by
Saint Marys University Art Gallery in
Halifax, Nova Scotia, Head-to-Head
was a fun conceptual show, in a post-
industrial vernacular.
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Jitish Kallat
Nature Morte Gallery
Jitish Kallat draws on the energy of
Mumbai to narrate the citys story
while creating a thought-provoking
oasis where one can ponder various
aspects of urban life. The title of his
recent show, Chlorophyll Park, pays
homage to the green pigment found
in plants. Photo collages that com-
bine everyday scenes with a verdant
green grass make chaos seem almost
restful. Kallat captures the nuances
of lifethe struggle underlying the
calm, the fight to survive, the simple
desire to live: I look for deeper ques-
tions that lie at the very heart of our
existence; in doing so, one might
draw up associations, summon anec-
dotes, play with formal devices,
metaphors, and evoke familiar daily
experiences.
The large-scale sculpture /nne\c
||cn takes the form of a beautifully
crafted, humble kerosene stove, a fix-
ture in millions of Indian households.
Made of black lead, resin, and steel,
it features images of Mumbais
Victoria Terminus. Kallats stove trans-
forms this familiar landmark, which
residents see nearly every day, into
a site of survival: the scenes of the
train station are overrun by a profu-
sion of animals, each trying to eat its
competitors in a bid to survive. The
journey of the common man, who
spends a substantial portion of his
life commuting by train, is captured
in ,,,, a sculpture made with
dental plastics. The four men on a
train endure their daily grind with
shrugs of weary acceptance. In the
photo worktcno|||cn /|, ., roti
(a flat bread eaten across India)
waxes and wanes like the moon, a
symbolic representation of hunger
and the cycle of life. In t|, c| ||e
6|cno, 108 shirt pockets display their
most common contentspen, wal-
let, cell phone, cigarettes, keys
sometimes flat, sometimes bulging
Left: Kelly Mark, Salt Series: Pillar
(Approx 100 Million), 1997. Salt shak-
ers, salt, and Plexiglas, 94 x 19 x 15.9
cm. Right: Jitish Kallat, Annexation,
2009. Black lead, resin, and steel, 72
x 59 x 51 in. Below: Jitish Kallat,
One Hour, 201112. Cast concrete,
19 x 64 x 31 in.
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_________
___
with a host of things. Choosing an
auspicious number from Hindu
mythology, Kallat leads us into 108
fascinating, potentially connected
tales. As he explains, In many ways,
if I look at it longer it begins to
unravel a different story.
Chlorophyll Park collected Kallats
work from 2009 to 2011, all woven
together through his study of the city
and, more importantly, the travails of
its citizens. A photo of a plant sprout
struggling to grow out of a concrete
wall epitomizes his approach. As
Kallat says, For me, it is resilience,
reassurance, a sign of life.
t||||c 3c|co||cmcn|cm
1tt Avt v
Roundabout: Face to Face
Tel Aviv Museum of Art
With artists from Asia, Australia, New
Zealand, Britain, and Israel, Round-
about: Face to Face could have been
an unfocused presentation. But that
was not the case. Portraits and fig-
ural scenes created a sense of unity,
drawing together this exhibition of
60 works (with sculpture predomi-
nating) from the 200-piece contem-
porary art collection of David
Teplitzky. All of the featured works
dealt with similar topics: ideological,
religious, or political perspectives, as
well as the clash or merger of differ-
ent cultures.
A number of installations carried
provocative messages that, in some
instances, diminished their aesthetic
value. Among the more successful
was Reena Saini Kallats Plexiglas-
enclosed portrait of an unidentified
youth constructed from rubber
stamps, each one bearing the name
of one child among the thousands
who go missing in India every year.
Another type of message, one of lin-
gering bitterness, was expressed
in Tony Alberts / tc||e:|eo |||c|,
(2010), a mixed-media installation
that includes stereotypical depictions
of Aboriginal people produced for the
tourist market. The word sorry past-
ed over a photo of a child refers to
the official apology offered in 2008
by the Australian Prime Minister to
the countrys indigenous population.
The clash of cultures appeared
in Chintan Upadhyays |cnomen|c|
3c|, |eco |/ (200709). Constructed
from fiber resin and painted in lurid
pop colors, the sculpture is covered
in scenes from Indian miniatures,
brought together with a portrait of
a top-hatted Englishmana clear
allusion to the era of the British Raj.
Figures of the Buddha seated in
classic pose formed the foundation
for two witty sculptures that
addressed the impact of Western
consumerism on traditional Eastern
religious imagery. In 3ooo|c |c||e|,
e|| t||||oe (2009), Nepalese artist
Tensing Rigdol used scriptures and
a U.S. map as a background for a
Buddha figure swathed in rich bro-
cades, his face and chest covered
with photos of cosmetics and
comestibles imported from the West.
In |c|| c| 6c|oen ||| (2011), Tibetan
artist Gonka Gyatsu explored a simi-
lar theme. Stickers of cartoon charac-
ters, flags, and slogans covered the
polyurethane body of the Buddha,
his topknot decorated with twists of
paper resembling candy wrappers.
Mao Zedong was the subject of
several wickedly irreverent represen-
tations by Chinese artists, who also
brought their ancient cultural her-
itage into the mix. Huang Yan
depicted the Chairman as a small
porcelain figure, hands raised as if to
applaud his own achievements and
body decorated with a landscape pat-
tern recalling the decorative blue
and white porcelain that originated
in 14th- century China. Zhu Wei
showed twin renderings of Mao from
his China China series of painted
aluminum sculptures (2007).
Although small in stature, these fig-
ures give a monumental impression.
Clad in faded red Mao jackets, their
weathered appearance looked back
to the figures unearthed in Han
Dynasty burial pits.
Searching for unity within the
estrangement of globalization, with
its economic, social, and cultural
conflicts, Roundabout: Face to
Face made a case for the common
goals of creative expression and
mutual artistic exchange. Listening
to different voices opened up a
journey of discovery, locating the
other within the self.
/ne|c |e.|ne
Right: Chintan Upadhyay, Monumental
Baby Head IV, 200709. Acrylic on
fiber resin, 150 x 150 x 150 cm. Below:
Tony Albert, A Collected History, 2010.
Reworked objects, sculptures, and
paintings, original paintings and
drawings, and 3 works contributed by
Vernon Ah Kee, Shane Cotton, and
Arthur Panbegan Jr., 240 x 600 cm.
Both from Roundabout.
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80 Sculpture 32.1
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isc PEOPLE, PLACES, AND EVENTS
DAVID PLATTER ON HIS ISC ART- ST- URBAN RESIDENCY
This summer I spent eight weeks living and working in St. Urban, Switzerland,
During my art-st-urban residency with Heinz and Gertrud Aeschlimann, not only
did I work with new materials, but I also deepened my cultural understanding.
South African artist Magdel Fourie of Pretoria and Polish sculptor Monika
Oasiecka were also in residence. While our studio time was focused and non-
verbal, mealtimes were filled with discussions about the cultures and practices
of our home countries. We frequently talked about the value of critical thinking
and its necessity in the arts, especially sculpture. Learning about other schools
and graduate experiences helped me to appreciate the wide range of opportu-
nities afforded by my graduate experience at the University of Kansas.
In addition to studio work, Heinz Aeschlimann offered us hands-on opportu-
nities to work through the difficulties posed by the transport and installation
of large works. During studio time, I worked with unfamiliar materials such as
bitumen, gussasphalt, foam glass, and plastics, as well as a variety of welding
and fabrication processes and techniques. For me, the highlights included
developing techniques in welding and discovering that gussasphalt can
be modeled through an approach similar to traditional clay techniques.
Heinz shared his process of working with gussasphalt as a material for artis-
tic expression. His example inspired me to push myself past my comfort zone
and attempt new ways of rendering the figure. I came to appreciate how gus-
sasphalt, like clay, tolerates pushing and shaping, with one important differ-
ence. While clay requires patience, and the work needs time and distance from
the modeling hand, gussasphalt allows for immediate manipulationwithin
an hour, the work has cooled and cured to a permanent state. There is no
post-modeled transformation like firing. This directness, transferred through
the work, reaches the viewer.
Other exceptional opportunities included experimenting with laser cutting
at Senn AG with Jorg Senn, wood carving in the mountains of Ticino, and
working with recycled plastic. The open, exploratory format provided me
with a fresh perspective on my work and how it can expand in a post-gradu-
ate reality in which I can no longer lean on a depart-
ment and school to encourage me with tools and
resources.
As I move into my new studio in Kansas City, I am
reminded of the drive and energy that Heinz brings
to his work every day. I want to move ahead because I
have had mentors who believe in me. I want to thank
my mentors at KUJohn Hachmeister, Jon Swindell,
Matthew Burke, Dave Vertacnik, Marshall Maude, and
Tanya Hartman. I appreciate the time and investment
that they poured into me, which enabled me to suc-
ceed in this opportunity.
My time at art-st-urban was humbling, eye opening, exciting, exhausting,
thrilling, and challenging. Through it, I met some of the kindest and most
compassionate people in the world, discovered Switzerland, ate amazing food,
worked in fantastic studios, and grew as an artist and as an individual. I have
also discovered new ways to contribute to the greater conversation in the field
of sculpture.
I sincerely thank Heinz and Gertrud Aeschlimann for supporting me and
opening their home and lives. I learned so much more than I imagined possi-
ble in eight weeks, and I continue to be reminded of their insights as I work
to build my studio at home. Their time, wisdom, and energy have meant a
great deal to me and have made a difference in my trajectory.
David Platter
|c.|o ||c||e| |e:e|.eo || ||/ ||cm ||e |n|.e|||, c| |cnc |n .o:: |e |e:e|.eo
c .o:: |t 0o||cno|n |ooen| /:||e.emen| |n tcn|emc|c|, :o||o|e /uc|o
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2012 OUTSTANDI NG STUDENT ACHI EVEMENT I N
CONTEMPORARY SCULPTURE AWARDS OPENI NG
AT GROUNDS FOR SCULPTURE
October 19, 2012 marked the 14th annual Student Awards opening reception
and award presentation at Grounds For Sculpture in Hamilton, NJ. Johannah
Hutchison, Executive Director of the ISC, introduced the winners with great
praise for their accomplishments and commitment to the field of contempo-
rary sculpture. The students were then honored with award certificates and
a cocktail reception in the Domestic Arts Building, where their work will be
on display through March 2013. The show will also travel to the Bellevue Arts
Museum in Bellevue, WA, in spring/summer 2013.
The 2012 competition attracted an exceptional number of participating
institutions; 434 students were nominated from 174 universities, colleges, and
sculpture programs. Jurors Joseph Antenucci Becherer, Chief Curator and Vice
President, Frederik Meijer Gardens & Sculpture Park; Donna Dennis, artist and
Professor of Art, Purchase College, State University of New York; and Winifred
Lutz, artist and Professor Emerita, Sculpture, Tyler School of Art, Temple
University selected 12 recipients and 22 honorable mentions.
Established in 1994, the Outstanding Student Achievement in Contemporary
Sculpture Award was created to recognize young sculptors and encourage their
continued commitment to the field of sculpture. For more details about the
student awards, or to find out about the 2013 competition, visit <www.sculpture.
org>, e-mail <studentawards@sculpure.org>, or call 609.689.1051, x305. David Platter modeling with gussasphalt.
2012 Student Award winner Adriana Corral discussing her work.
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____________________________
__________________________
__________________________

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