Sculpture 2010

sculpture
April 2010
Vol. 29 No. 3
A publication of the
International Sculpture Center
www.sculpture.org
Phillip King
William Tucker
Leonardo Drew
Ceal Floyer
Contents | Zoom in | Zoom out Search Issue | Next Page For navigation instructions please click here
Contents | Zoom in | Zoom out Search Issue | Next Page For navigation instructions please click here
___________
Previous Page | Contents | Zoom in | Zoom out | Front Cover | Search Issue | Next Page
sculpture
B
A
M S a
G E
F
sculpture
B
A
M S a
G E
F
________________________
________________
sculpture
B
A
M S a
G E
F
sculpture
B
A
M S a
G E
F
__________________________
sculpture
B
A
M S a
G E
F
sculpture
B
A
M S a
G E
F
_______________
sculpture
B
A
M S a
G E
F
sculpture
B
A
M S a
G E
F
If you read my letters, you probably realize that I dedicate most of
them to events at the ISC. Periodically, however, I veer off on a tangent
about an art-related topic that I find interesting or worthy of discus-
sion. By the time you see this, many of us will be on our way to
London to attend the ISCs 22nd International Sculpture Conference,
What is Sculpture in the 21st Century? and to celebrate the presen-
tation of the ISCs 2010 Lifetime Achievement Award to Phillip King
and William Tucker.
Next month, I hope to tell you more about the outcome of our
strategic planning process, but for the remainder of this letter, I would
like to take a different direction. Since I moved to Utah in 2002,
January has come to signify not the blowing sub-zero winds of Chicago
but the congregation of the film industrys whos-who in Park City for
the annual Sundance Film Festival. Broadly speaking, Sundance is
about artat least to the extent you agree that film is art (though
the festival now includes a very exciting video art segment, which cer-
tainly qualifies)but this year, it had a much more direct connection
to the visual arts. In anticipation of the preview of a documentary
about the world-famous graffiti artist known only as Banksy, his work
magically appeared in Park City and Salt Lake Cityprovocative appari-
tions that, in my view, are completely respectful of, and responsive
to, their context. From all accounts, the owners of the tagged build-
ings were delighted with his additions, and the throngs of Sundance
visitors who sought out the work learned that the words Utah
and art were not such strange bedfellows as they might have
thought.
Based on this enthusiastic response, I was surprisedthough I sup-
pose I should not have beenthat on-line public commentary about
Banksys tagging here not only reflected support for his work, but also
included some exceptionally negative comments. For these writers, the
tagging was tantamount to criminal activity and an abuse of private
property. One commentator even suggested that Banksy should not
be credited as an artist at all.
I didnt know of Banksy until two years ago (my bad), but I have come
to love and respect his work. I find it to be beautiful and thought-
provoking because of its location and content. Having it appear in my
own neighborhood allowed me to realize that whatever my personal
feelings, Banksys work fulfills some of arts most basic and important
functions, impacting, and even infringing on, our lives while making
us think about and continually examine the world around us.
Well, maybe this letter is about the ISC after all. I hope to see some
of you in London to begin to answer the question: What is sculpture
in the 21st century?
Josh Kanter
Chairman, ISC Board of Directors
From the Chairman
4 Sculpture 29.3
ISC Board of Directors
Chairman: Josh Kanter, Salt Lake City, UT
Chakaia Booker, New York, NY
Robert Edwards, Naples, FL
Bill FitzGibbons, San Antonio, TX
David Handley, Australia
Paul Hubbard, Philadelphia, PA
Ree Kaneko, Omaha, NE
Gertrud Kohler-Aeschlimann, Switzerland
Marc LeBaron, Lincoln, NE
Patricia Meadows, Dallas, TX
George W. Neubert, Brownville, NE
Albert Paley, Rochester, NY
Russ RuBert, Springfield, MO
Walter Schatz, Nashville, TN
Sebastin, Mexico
STRETCH, Kansas City, MO
Steinunn Thorarinsdottir, Iceland
Boaz Vaadia, New York, NY
Chairmen Emeriti: Robert Duncan, Lincoln, NE
John Henry, Chattanooga, TN
Peter Hobart, Italy
Robert Vogele, Hinsdale, IL
Founder: Elden Tefft, Lawrence, KS
Lifetime Achievement
in Contemporary
Sculpture Recipients
Magdalena Abakanowicz
Fletcher Benton
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
Gio Pomodoro
Robert Rauschenberg
George Rickey
George Segal
Kenneth Snelson
William Tucker
sculpture
B
A
M S a
G E
F
sculpture
B
A
M S a
G E
F
Departments
12 News
14 Itinerary
20 Commissions
80 ISC News
Reviews
69 Wakefield, U.K.: Peter Randall-Page
70 San Francisco: Gail Wight
71 Minneapolis: The Quick and the Dead
72 New York: Tony Oursler
73 New York: Evan Penny
74 New York: Charles Ray
75 Pittsburgh: Thaddeus Mosley
75 Houston: Light as Air
76 Cambridge, Ontario: Gareth Lichty
77 London: Annette Messager
78 London: Grard Quenum
78 Western Galilee, Israel: Bernie Fink
79 Taipei: Ping-Yu Pan
On the Cover: This months cover celebrates
the two winners of the 2010 ISC Lifetime
Achievement in Contemporary Sculpture
Award. Depending on your copy, the cover
illustrates one of these two works:
Phillip King, No sitting, no leaning, 2007.
Paint on foam PVC, 104 x 195 x 127 cm.
Photograph: Courtesy Bernard Jacobson
Gallery, London.
William Tucker, Chinese Horse, 2003. Bronze,
100 x 90 x 39 in. Photograph: Courtesy
McKee Gallery, New York.
Features
22 Phillip King: A Life in Sculpture by Barnaby Wright
28 William Tucker: From the Formal to the Primeval by David Cohen
34 Leonardo Drew: Epic Mythologies of Detritus by Rebecca Dimling Cochran
40 Ceal Floyers Special by Lilly Wei
46 Nothing Outlives Mortality: A Conversation with Kristen Morgin by Michal Amy
52 The Scale of Perception: A Conversation with Katrn Sigurdardttir by Jan Garden Castro
56 Loose Ends: A Conversation with Tariq Alvi by Joli Reichel
58 Everyday Monuments: A Conversation with Jean Shin by Sarah Tanguy
34
sculpture
April 2010
Vol. 29 No. 3
A publication of the
International Sculpture Center
Sculpture April 2010 5
52
40
46
58
sculpture
B
A
M S a
G E
F
sculpture
B
A
M S a
G E
F
6 Sculpture 29.3
S CUL PT URE MAGAZ I NE
Editor Glenn Harper
Managing Editor Twylene Moyer
Editorial Assistants Elizabeth Lynch
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)
isc
Major Donors ($50,000+)
Fletcher Benton
Rob Fisher
John Henry
Richard Hunt
Johnson Art and Education
Foundation
J. Seward Johnson, Jr.
Robert Mangold
Fred & Lena Meijer
I.A. OShaughnessy Foundation
Arnaldo Pomodoro
Russ RuBert
Jon & Mary Shirley Foundation
James Surls
Bernar Venet
Directors Circle ($5,0009,999)
Chairmans Circle ($10,00049,999)
Sydney & Walda Besthoff
Otto M. Budig Family
Foundation
Lisa Colburn
Carol Feuerman
Bill FitzGibbons
Linda Fleming
Gagosian Gallery
Gallery Kasahara
The James J. and Joan A.
Gardner Foundation
Michael D. Hall
David Handley
Peter C. Hobart
Mary Ann Keeler
Cynthia Madden Leitner/
Museum of Outdoor Arts
Susan Lloyd
Marlene & William
Louchheim
Patricia Meadows
Merchandise Mart
Properties
Peter Moore
National Gallery
Ralph S. OConnor
Mary OShaughnessy
Frances & Albert Paley
Barry Parker
Patricia Renick
Henry Richardson
Melody Sawyer Richardson
Riva Yares Gallery
Wendy Ross
Walter Schatz
Sculpture Community/
Sculpture.net
Sebastin
Katherine and
Kenneth Snelson
Duane Stranahan, Jr.
STRETCH
Takahisa Suzuki
Tate
Steinunn Thorarinsdottir
Laura Thorne
Boaz Vaadia
Robert E. Vogele
Harry T. Wilks
Isaac Witkin
Magdalena Abakanowicz
John Adduci
Atlantic Foundation
Bill Barrett
Blue Star Contemporary
Art Center
Debra Cafaro & Terrance
Livingston
William Carlson
Sir Anthony Caro
Chelsea College of Art
and Design
Dale Chihuly
Erik & Michele Christiansen
Citigroup
Clinton Family Fund
Woods Davy
Stephen De Staebler
Karen & Robert Duncan
Terry and Robert Edwards
Lin Emery
Virginio Ferrari
Doris & Donald Fisher
Gene Flores
Viola Frey
Alan Gibbs
Neil Goodman
Michael Gutzwiller
Richard Heinrich
John Hock
Stephen Hokanson
Jon Isherwood
Joyce and Seward Johnson
Foundation
Jun & Ree Kaneko
Joshua S. Kanter
Kanter Family Foundation
Keeler Foundation
William King
Gertrud & Heinz Kohler-
Aeschlimann
Anne Kohs Associates
Koret Foundation
Marc LeBaron
Toby D. Lewis
Philanthropic Fund
Lincoln Industries
Marlborough Gallery
Denise Milan
David Nash
National Endowment
for the Arts
Alissa Neglia
Manuel Neri
Tom Otterness
Joel Perlman
Pat Renick Gift Fund
Estate of John A. Renna
Salt Lake Art Center
Lincoln Schatz
June & Paul Schorr, III
Judith Shea
Dr. and Mrs. Robert
Slotkin
Kiki Smith
Mark di Suvero
University of the Arts
London
Nadine Witkin, Estate of
Isaac Witkin
Address all editorial correspondence to:
Sculpture
1633 Connecticut Avenue NW, 4th Floor
Washington, DC 20009
Phone: 202.234.0555, fax 202.234.2663
E-mail: gharper@sculpture.org
Sculpture On-Line on the International
Sculpture Center Web site:
www.sculpture.org
Advertising information
E-mail <advertising@sculpture.org>
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
that provides programming and services supported by contributions, grants,
sponsorships, and memberships.
The ISC Board of Directors 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
Executive Director Johannah Hutchison
Conference and Events Manager Dawn Molignano
Office Manager Denise Jester
Membership Coordinator Lauren Hallden-Abberton
Membership Associate Emily Fest
Web and Portfolio Manager Frank Del Valle
Conferences and Events Associate Valerie Friedman
Executive Assistant Kara Kaczmarzyk
Administrative Associate Eva Calder Powel
ISC Headquarters
19 Fairgrounds Road, Suite B
Hamilton, New Jersey 08619
Phone: 609.689.1051, fax 609.689.1061
E-mail: isc@sculpture.org
Patrons Circle ($2,5004,999)
Henry Buhl
Elizabeth Catlett
Chateau Ste. Michelle Winery
John Cleveland
Essex Fine Art
Federated Department
Stores Foundation
Francis Ford Coppola Presents
Frederik Meijer Gardens &
Sculpture Park
Ghirardelli Chocolates
Grounds for Sculpture
Agnes Gund & Daniel Shapiro
Nanci Lanni
McFadden Winery
Museum of Glass
Edward Tufte
Geraldine Warner
Marsha & Robin Williams
Each issue of Sculpture is indexed in The Art Index and
the Bibliography of the History of Art (BHA).
____________
_____________
_________
sculpture
B
A
M S a
G E
F
sculpture
B
A
M S a
G E
F
About the ISC
The International Sculpture Center, a member-supported, nonprofit organization
founded in 1960, advances the creation and understanding of sculpture and its
unique, vital contribution to society. The ISC seeks to expand public understanding
and appreciation of sculpture internationally, demonstrate the power of sculpture
to educate, effect social change, engage artists and arts professionals in a
dialogue to advance the art form, and promote a supportive environment for
sculpture and sculptors. Members include sculptors, collectors, patrons, educa-
tors, and museum professionalsanyone with an interest in and commitment
to the field of sculpture.
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
listings of over 250 outdoor sculpture destinations; Opportunities, a membership
service with commissions, jobs, and other professional listings; plus the ISC
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
Achievement Award in Contemporary Sculpture and gala. Other special events
include opportunities for viewing art and for meeting colleagues in the field.
This issue is supported
in part by a grant from
the National Endowment
for the Arts.
This program is made possible in
part by funds from the New Jersey
State Council on the Arts/Department
of State, a Partner Agency of the
National Endowment for the Arts.
555 International Inc.Ruth AbernethyLinda Ackley-EakerAcklie
Charitable FoundationMine AkinElizabeth AraliaMichelle Armitage
Uluhan AtacMichael AurbachJacqueline AvantHelena Bacardi-Kiely
Brooke BarrieJerry Ross BarrishEdward BenaventeJoseph Benevenia
Patricia Bengtson JonesHelen BensoConstance BergforsRoger Berry
Henri BertrandCharles BienvenuCindy BillingsleyRebecca & Robert
BlattbergRita BlittChristian BoltRudolf BoneKurtis BomarGilbert V.
BoroJames Bud BottomsLouise BourgeoisJudith BritainSteven S.
BrownCharles BrummellGil BruvelHal BucknerH. Edward Burke
Maureen Burns-BowieKeith BushMary Pat ByrnePattie ByronJohn
CarlsonKati CasidaMary Ann Ellis CasselDavid CaudillJohn Challenger
Asherah CinnamonJohn ClementJonathan ClowesMarco Cochrane
Austin CollinsRon CooperWlodzimierz CzupinkaSukhdev DailArianne
DarJohn B. DavidsonMartin DaweArabella DeckerG.S. Demirok
Bruce DempseyPatrick DiamondAlbert DicruttaloPeter iepenbrock
Anthony DiFrancescoKaren DimitLaury DizengremelKatherine Donnelly
Dorit DornierJim DoubledayPhilip S. DrillKathryn D. DuncanThomas J.
DwyerWard ElickerElaine EllisRobert ErskineHelen EscobedoJohn
EvansPhilip John EvettZhang FengHelaman FergusonJosephine
FergusonHeather FerrellTalley FisherTrue FisherDustine Folwarczny
Basil C. FrankMary Annella FrankGayle & Margaret FranzenJames
GallucciRon GardDenise & Gary GardnerRonald GarriguesShohini
GhoshJames S. GibsonJohn GillGordon Huether StudioThomas
GottslebenTodd GrahamGabriele Poehlmann GrundigRose Ann
GrundmanBarbara GrygutisSimon GudgeonNohra HaimeCalvin Hall
Wataru HamasakaBob HaozousPortia HarcusJacob J. Harmeling
Susan HarrisonChristie HefnerDaniel A. HendersonSally HeplerDavid
B. HickmanJoyce HilliouAnthony HirschelDar HornRuth Horwich
Bernard HoseyJill HotchkissJack Howard-PotterBrad HowePaul
HubbardRobert HuffYoshitada IharaEve IngallsRoy Soren Jespersen
Julia JitkoffJohanna JordanYvette Kaiser SmithWolfram KaltKent
KarlssonTerrence KarpowiczRay KatzCornelia KavanaghLita Kelmenson
Colin KerriganSilya KieseGloria KischStephen KishelBernard Klevickas
Jeffrey KraftKUBOTodji KurtzmanLynn E. La CountJennifer Laemlein
Dale LamphereEllen LanyonKarl LautmanHenry LautzWon Lee
Michael Le GrandLevin & Schreder, Ltd.Evan LewisJohn R. LightKen
LightRobert LindsayRobert LonghurstSharon LoperCharles Loving
Noriaki MaedaLenville MaxwellJeniffer McCandlessJoseph McDonnell
Darcy MeekerRon MehlmanJames MeyerCreighton MichaelGina
MichaelsRuth Aizuss Migdal-BrownLowell MillerBrian Monaghan
Norman MooneyAiko MoriokaBrad MortonKeld MoseholmSerge
MozhnevskyW.W. MuellerAnna MurchRobert MurphyMorley Myers
Arnold NadlerMarina NashNathan Manilow Sculpture ParkIsobel
NealJohn & Anne NelsonGeorge NeubertJohn NicolaiEleanor Nickel
James NickelBrenda NoelDonald NoonJoseph OConnellThomas
OHaraMichelle OMichaelJames ONealScott PalsceJames T. Parker
Ronald ParksRomona PayneVernon PeasenellCarol PeligianBeverly
PepperRobert PerlessAnne & Doug PetersonDirk PetersonDaniel
PostellonBev PreciousJonathan QuickMadeline Murphy RabbMorton
RachofskyMarcia RaffVicky RandallJeannette ReinWellington Reiter
Ellie RileyKevin RobbSalvatore RomanoAnn RorimerHarvey Sadow
James B. SaguiNathan SawayaTom ScarffMarilyn SchanzeMark
SchcachterPeter SchifrinAndy ScottJoseph H. SeipelJerry ShoreImel
SierraDebra SilverJerry SimmsWilliam SimpsonSusan Smith-Trees
Stan SmoklerSam SpiczkaJohn StallingsEric SteinLinda SteinEric
StephensonMichael SternsJohn StewartPasha StinsonElizabeth
Strong-CuevasTash TaskaleCordell TaylorTimothy TaylorPeter Terry
Ana ThielStephen TironeCliff TisdellRein TriefeldtWilliam Tucker
Thomas TuttleLeonidas TzavarasEdward UhlirVasko VassilevMartine
VaugelPhilip VaughanAles VeselyJill VineyJames WakeLeonard Walker
Martha WalkerBlake WardMark WarwickDavid WeinbergGeorgia
WellesPhilip WicklanderRaymond WicklanderJohn Wiederspan
Madeline WienerW.K. Kellogg FoundationJean WolffDr. Barnaby Wright
Cigdem YapanarRiva YaresLarry YoungSteve ZaluskiGavin Zeigler
Friends Circle ($1,0002,499)
Bishop & Mrs. Claude
Alexander
Neil Bardack
Verina Baxter
Bruce Beasley
Joseph Becherer
Tom Bollinger & Kim
Nikolaev
Chakaia Booker
Paige Bradley
Sylvia Brown
Elizabeth Burstein
Chihuly Studio
Paula Cooper Gallery
Cornish College of the Arts
James Cottrell
Les & Ginger Crane
Charles Cross
Rick & Dana Davis
Richard & Valerie Deutsch
James Dubin
Bob Emser
Forrest Gee
James Geier
Piero Giadrossi
Helyn Goldenberg
Christina Gospondnetich
Paul & Dedrea Gray
Richard Green
Francis Greenburger
Ralf Gschwend
Dr. LaRue Harding
Ed Hardy Habit/Hardy LLC
Michelle Hobart
Vicki Hopton
Iowa West Foundation
George Johnson
Philip & Paula Kirkeby
Howard Kirschbaum
Stephen & Frankie Knapp
Phlyssa Koshland
Alvin & Judith Kraus
Gary Kulak
John & Deborah Lahey
Jon Lash
Eric & Audrey Lester
Daryl Lillie
Peter Lundberg
Steve Maloney
Lewis Manilow
Martin Margulies
Robert E. McKenzie &
Theresia Wolf-McKenzie
Jill & Paul Meister
Kenneth Merlau
Jon Miller
Museum of Contemporary
Art, Chicago
Alan Osborne
Raymond Nasher
Sassona Norton
Claes Oldenburg & Coosje
van Bruggen
Steven Oliver
Angelina Pacaldo
William Padnos & Mary
Pannier
Philip Palmedo
Justin Peyser
Meinhard Pfanner, art
connection international
Playboy Enterprises, Inc
Cynthia Polsky
Allen Ralston
Mel & Leta Ramos
Carl & Toni Randolph
Andre Rice
Benjamin & Donna Rosen
Milton Rosenberg
Saul Rosenzweig
Aden Ross
Carmella Saraceno
Noah Savett
Jean & Raymond V. J. Schrag
Marc Selwyn
Stephen Shapiro
Alan Shepp
Marvin & Sondra Smalley
Thomas Smith
Storm King Art Center
Julian Taub
The Todd and Betiana Simon
Foundation
Tootsie Roll Industries
William Traver Gallery
UBS Art
De Wain & Kiana Valentine
Allan & Judith Voigt
Ursula Von Rydingsvard
Alex Wagman
Michael Windfelt
John E. Young
Professional Circle ($350999)
sculpture
B
A
M S a
G E
F
sculpture
B
A
M S a
G E
F
_____________
__________
sculpture
B
A
M S a
G E
F
sculpture
B
A
M S a
G E
F
__________________
sculpture
B
A
M S a
G E
F
sculpture
B
A
M S a
G E
F
_________
_____________ ______________
sculpture
B
A
M S a
G E
F
sculpture
B
A
M S a
G E
F
____________________
sculpture
B
A
M S a
G E
F
sculpture
B
A
M S a
G E
F
12 Sculpture 29.3
news
Bchel vs. Mass MoCA Round Two
A federal appeals court recently overturned a 2007 lower court
decision in the case of Christoph Bchel versus Mass MoCA (News,
September 2007). The U.S. Court of Appeals in Boston ruled that a
federal district judge should have applied the Visual Artists Rights
Act of 1990, which protects artists in the event of a distortion,
mutilation or other modification of the work, to Bchels unfinished
|c|n|n 6|cono |c| |emc:|c:,. This ambitious collaboration with
Mass MoCA turned contentious soon after work began in 2006.
Bchel claimed that the museum mishandled the project, making
construction and aesthetic decisions without his approval; Mass
MoCA countered that the artist was frequently absent during the
(extended) installation period and demanded budget-doubling
changes. Forced to cancel the show, Mass MoCA sued Bchel in
2007 and won the right to display the unfinished work, which it dis-
mantled after negative responses. The appeals court ruling cites evi-
dence that would permit a jury to find that the museum forged
ahead with the installationknowing that the continuing construc-
tion in Bchels absence would frustrateand likely contradict
[his] artistic vision. The three-judge panel also referred to material
disputes of fact that should be decided by a jury, a course that
Bchel may pursue. Sergio Sarmiento, associate director of Volun-
teer Lawyers for the Arts, which assisted in Bchels appeal, told the
NewYork |me that their plan is to litigate this to the fullest extent
possible. Mass MoCA maintains that it exercised appropriate cura-
torial care and diligence in [the] handling of the work in progress.
Newsbriefs
More than 20 newly digitized resources related to Henry Moore have recently been
released on-line. Collected by the BBC and the Henry Moore Foundation, the docu-
mentaries, interviews, and reports span nearly five decades and include six classic
BBC programs made by John Read, whose Henry Moore: Art is the Expression of
Imagination and Not the Imitation of Life follows the creation of |e:||n|n ||o|e
(1951) from sketch to final bronze. The Moore material can be accessed through
the BBCs archive <www.bbc.co.uk/archive> and the Henry Moore Foundation
<www.henry-moore-fdn.co.uk>. Selections are also on viewat Tate Britains Moore
retrospective (through August 8) and at <www.tate.org.uk>.
As we go to press, Anish Kapoor is set to win a hushed competition for a 15 mil-
lion sculptural icon to brand the 2012 London Olympics (funded by steel magnate
Lakshmi Mittal). His 400-foot asymmetrical tower (six times taller than Gormleys
/ne| c| ||e |c||| and twice as high as Mark Wallingers horse planned for north
Kent) comes with elevators and sweeping views and again pairs Kapoor with struc-
tural engineer Cecil Balmond. Their previous collaborations include |c|,c for Tur-
bine Hall and the Tees Valley Giants, a series of five monumental works underway in
the towns of Darlington, Hartlepool, Middlesbrough, Redcar and Cleveland, and
Stockton on Tees. The first, emenc, is scheduled for completion later this month.
When finished, the five Giants will become the worlds largest public artwork.
Serras Shift Now a Heritage Site
After delays dating back to February 2008, councillors
in King Township, Ontario, recently voted to desig-
nate Richard Serras |||| (197072) as a heritage
site. Formal steps to protect the large-scale rural
earthwork became necessary after rumors surfaced
in 2007 that it was threatened by development (News,
May 2008). In addition to ||||s designation under
the Ontario Heritage Act, its immediate site and sur-
rounding lands are now a Natural Core Area, which
prohibits development. While a victory in name,
these these measures may ultimately prove tooth-
less. Property owner Hickory Hills, which opposed
heritage status, has argued fromthe start that while
it has no intention of altering or damaging the sculp-
ture, it cannot provide maintenance or access||||
is located in active farmlandand it has prevailed
on these points. The heritage act requires neither
maintenance nor access, only preservation and pro-
tection. Its difficult to know how a work can be pre-
served when its owner is excused from all responsi-
bility to maintain it or protect it from damage by
third parties or the elements. Serra, however, was
pleased, saying, To know that it will be preserved
in perpetuity, and as a result of the efforts of the
people of King Township, is very satisfying.
The Museum According to Noguchi
The Noguchi Museum in New York has long been considered one of Isamu
Noguchis greatest achievements. Through October 24, 2010, visitors have the
opportunity to explore a new installation that restores the artists striking vision
for the integration of artwork, building, and grounds. Noguchi ReINstalled
includes some 200 works, dating from the 1920s to the 1980s, arranged with an
eye toward aesthetic and spatial harmony rather than the usual principles of cura-
torial organization. Not only have the indoor galleries been transformed, the
sculpture garden has also been restored to its original appearance, the selection
of works lending a sense of rest and contemplation to this urban environment.
Installation view of Noguchis Practice Rocks in Placement and Indian Dancer.
N
O
G
U
C
H
I
M
U
S
E
U
M
S
C
U
L
P
T
U
R
E
G
A
R
D
E
N
:
G
E
O
R
G
E
H
I
R
O
S
E
,
C
O
U
R
T
E
S
Y
T
H
E
N
O
G
U
C
H
I
M
U
S
E
U
M
,
N
Y
sculpture
B
A
M S a
G E
F
sculpture
B
A
M S a
G E
F
________________________
________________________________
_______________________
sculpture
B
A
M S a
G E
F
sculpture
B
A
M S a
G E
F
14 Sculpture 29.3
H
O
L
Z
E
R
:
V
A
S
S
I
L
I
J
G
U
R
E
E
V
,
2
0
1
0
J
E
N
N
Y
H
O
L
Z
E
R
,
M
E
M
B
E
R
A
R
T
I
S
T
S
R
I
G
H
T
S
S
O
C
I
E
T
Y
(
A
R
S
)
,
N
Y
/
L
I
N
:
A
R
T
S
C
L
U
B
O
F
C
H
I
C
A
G
O
,
C
O
U
R
T
E
S
Y
P
A
C
E
W
I
L
D
E
N
S
T
E
I
N
,
N
Y
/
C
O
F
F
I
N
:
J
A
M
E
S
E
W
I
N
G
,
C
O
U
R
T
E
S
Y
P
U
B
L
I
C
A
R
T
F
U
N
D
/
K
U
S
A
M
A
:
C
O
U
R
T
E
S
Y
G
A
G
O
S
I
A
N
G
A
L
L
E
R
Y
,
N
Y
Arts Club of Chicago
t||:cc
Maya Lin
||co| /||| .,, .o:o
Lin has spent much of the last
decade exploring how our approach
to the world beyond the manmade
is extended, condensed, distorted,
and mapped via technology. The
indoor sculptures and installations
gathered in her topologies and
Systematic Landscapes exhibitions
translate features of the natural
world such as hills, undersea forma-
tions, and mountain ranges into
regularized spaces that visitors can
walk through, pass under, or view
from above, conceptualizing passive
experience of the wild into an inti-
mate formal and physical apprecia-
tion. The 11 works in this show con-
tinue her investigation into systems
of reading the landscape (models,
grids, topographic renderings, sonar
views, and satellite images), using
technological data to create sculp-
tural forms that illuminate our rela-
tionship with the environment.
Tel: 312.787.3997
Web site
<www.artsclubchicago.org>
Baltic Centre for Contemporary Art
6c|e|eco, ||
Jenny Holzer
||co| |c, :o, .o:o
For more than 30 years, Holzer
has paired text and installation to
examine emotional and societal
realities. Combining an investigative
use of language with an innovative
use of materials and modes of dis-
tributionLEDs, billboards, marble
benches, T-shirts, condom wrappers,
and projectionsshe confronts
some of the most potent issues
of contemporary life. Her choice
of forms and media crafts sensate
experience out of contradictory
voices, opinions, and attitudes, chal-
lenging assumptions while offering
an incisive portrait of the facts and
fictions that govern public and pri-
vate life. This exhibition focuses on
the greater visual and spatial
presence that has characterized her
work since the mid-1990s. More
familiar to European audiences,
these full-scale experiential installa-
tions join political bravura with for-
mal beauty, sensitivity, and power.
Tel: + 44 (0) 191 478 1810
Web site <www.balticmill.com>
City Hall Park
|eu 'c||
Peter Coffin
||co| |c, .o:o
Coffins quirky and playful projects
give substance to the invisible and
sometimes impossible, channeling
art history, fringe and pseudo-sci-
ence, social psychology, and episte-
mology to explore interpretation
and perception. He has flown a self-
constructed UFO over the Baltic
Sea, transformed a greenhouse into
a performance space offering
music for plants, and designed an
elaborate machine to transport a
single helium balloon along a calcu-
lated, natural course. His |n||||eo
(:o||o|e |||coe||e; travels
through the history of sculpture, re-
presenting the familiar forms of
such iconic three-dimensional works
as an Easter Island head, Rodins
|e ||n|e|, Picassos |e 6cc|, and
Bourgeoiss |n||||eo (H||| |cno;.
At eight to 10 feet tall, their com-
manding presence is misleading
only one inch thick, these works are
mirages that slip in and out of solid-
ity like memories and associations
slip in and out of the mind.
Tel: 212.980.4575
Web site
<www.publicartfund.org>
Fairchild Tropical Botanic Garden
tc|c| 6c||e, ||c||oc
Yayoi Kusama
||co| |c, ,o, .o:o
Kusama first gained recognition in
the 60s by advocating social trans-
formation through happenings, per-
formances, and installations. She
was soon at the forefront of Pop art,
with soft sculptures and clothes
featuring food-based imagery and
room-size installations covered
in eye-popping rhythmical patterns.
The psychedelic optics continue in
her large-scale outdoor worksvivid
and playful, botanically inspired
forms that find a perfect home in
the Fairchilds exotic, tropical par-
adise. This showinga surreal
garden within the real garden
features a group of her classic
|om||n, a new sculptural ensem-
ble called ||cue| ||c| 3|ccm c|
||on|||, and a multi-part floating
work conceived for a pond.
Tel: 305.667.1651
Web site
<www.fairchildgarden.org>
itinerary
Left: Jenny Holzer, Thorax. Above:
Maya Lin, Caspian Sea. Top right:
Peter Coffin, Untitled (Sculpture
Silhouettes). Right: Yayoi Kusama,
Guidepost to the New Space.
sculpture
B
A
M S a
G E
F
sculpture
B
A
M S a
G E
F
Frederik Meijer Gardens and
Sculpture Park
6|cno |c|o
Michele Oka Doner
||co| |c, ), .o:o
Drawing inspiration from earth- and
water-bound forms and textures,
Oka Doner transforms a wide range
of materialsfrom wax and clay to
bronze and silverinto sculptural
acts of metamorphosis. Half-formed
human figures emerge from or dis-
integrate into the structural fabric
of coral, bark, vines, and stems;
roots and branches sprout into
candelabra and chairs; and shells,
pearls, starfish, and arboreal
canopies rise from the depths of ter-
razzo floors. In this world of con-
stant change and possibility, Oka
Doner sees herself as a hunter-gath-
erer, seeking and translating the
inventiveness of nature. This exhibi-
tion, her largest to date, examines
the full range of her diverse activi-
ties, including co| tc|:|e|, a
recent installation of 1,500 ceramic
elements, and 3enec|| ||e |ec|,
t|cun, a new 1,200-square-foot floor
commissioned by the Meijer.
Tel: 888.957.1580
Web site
<www.meijergardens.org>
Hammer Museum
|c /ne|e
Rachel Whiteread
||co| /||| .,, .o:o
Whiteread has spent 25 years creat-
ing an inverse inventory of domestic
life, casting the space within and
around objects to create negative
impressions of cupboards, tables,
bath tubs, wash basins, beds, mat-
tresses, stairways, rooms, and entire
houses. While her sculpture is well
known, her work on paper has
remained largely behind the scenes.
Whiteread thinks of her drawings as
a diary, and like journal passages,
they range from fleeting ideas to
labored reflections. Variegated tex-
tures, subtle nuances of tone, and
the play of collage form distinctive
elements in these intimate works,
which may be produced indepen-
dently of the sculptures but evoke
similar notions of presence and
absence. This show features 155
drawings, as well as eight key sculp-
tures. Among the highlights is a
vitrine of 200 objects assembled by
Whiteread whose sketchbook col-
lection includes her own works as
well as discovered souvenirs, each
one a captured memory that like her
drawings and sculptures absorb[s]
the time of its making.
Tel: 310.443.7000
Web site
<www.hammer.ucla.edu>
Haus der Kunst
|on|:|
Golden Times
||co| /||| ::, .o:o
Any quotidian event has the poten-
tial to alter history: as Hilary
Mantels Thomas Cromwell says, For-
get the coronationsthe pomp and
processionsthis is how the world
changes: a counter pushed across a
table, a pen strokea womans sigh
as she passes. The question is who
dictates the canonical narrative.
Golden Times features four artists
whose sculptures and installations
examine such postmodern rumina-
tions in new ways. Steven Claydon,
Diango Hernndez, Mai-Thu Perret,
and Sung Hwan Kim present history
as elastic, nonlinear, and fragmen-
tary, diverted from its course by per-
sonal experience, story-telling,
and time lags. Claydons hybrids of
object and pedestal, artifact and
display, upend memorials, cult
objects, and the culture of admira-
tion. Hernndezs constructed steel
timeline frames and organizes his
domestic-object sculptures, tracing
and retracing the historical paths of
Cuba from the revolution to the pre-
sent. Perrets optimistically satirical
|e t|,|c| ||cn||e| plays with 20th-
century avant- garde utopias, paro-
dying Modernisms lofty ideals with
papier-mch, ceramic, textiles, and
light to fashion imaginary histories
and futures. And Kims film installa-
tions tell stories that emerge like
dreams, the materials from which
rumors, myths, legends, and even
history are made.
Tel: + 49 89 21127-113
Web site <www.hausderkunst.de>
Kunsthaus Graz
6|c, /o|||c
Tatiana Trouv
||co| |c, :o, .o:o
Trouvs installations embody psy-
chic spacespaces of waiting and
reminiscence, of imminence and
slow transformations, each one
envisioning the form and workings
of memory. Although constructed
in three dimensions and placed so
viewers can move around them, the
objects that occupy these spaces
are always drawn: not so much rep-
resented as projected. In fact, Trouv O
K
A
D
O
N
E
R
:
C
O
U
R
T
E
S
Y
D
O
N
E
R
S
T
U
D
I
O
/
W
H
I
T
E
R
E
A
D
:
C
O
U
R
T
E
S
Y
T
A
T
E
M
O
D
E
R
N
/
T
R
O
U
V
:
D
A
N
I
E
L
E
R
E
S
I
N
I
/
C
L
A
Y
D
O
N
:
A
N
D
Y
K
E
A
T
E
Above: Michele Oka Doner, Root Sys-
tem. Top right: Rachel Whiteread, Study
(Blue) for Floor. Right: Tatiana Trouv,
Untitled. Far right: Steven Claydon, Won
FromCoarseness, fromGolden Times.
sculpture
B
A
M S a
G E
F
sculpture
B
A
M S a
G E
F
itinerary
16 Sculpture 29.3
says that to install is to hide
something, whereas to draw is to
reveal, clarify, and open possibili-
ties. This new installation wordlessly
alludes to Dino Buzzatis novella ||
6|cnoe ||||c||c, embodying an
idea of particular importance
to Trouvthe secret as a place of
exile. In this intermediate dimen-
sion between mind and object,
structures develop in a void full of
doubt, expectations, and fantasies.
As Buzzatis protagonists say, Every
language is a trap for thought and
language is the worst enemy of
mental clarity.
Tel: + 43 316/8017 9200
Web site <www.museum-
joanneum.at/de/kunsthaus>
Malm Konsthall
|c|mc, ueoen
Hans-Peter Feldmann
||co| |c, ., .o:o
Feldmann, whose casual inventories
of ordinary things have influenced
two generations of European artists,
creates elegantly spare installations,
sculptures, books, photographs, and
paintings that illuminate the mys-
teries of daily life. Sifted through
a conceptual sieve, his collected
images and objectswhether mass-
produced or artist- generated
re-present the vernacular, the ama-
teur, the ephemeral, and the unat-
tended, bringing order and under-
standing to bear on a cacophony of
visual trivia. This exhibition includes
a wide range of work, including the
recent :|c||en|e| (2002) in which
revolving platforms of spotlighted
toys, souvenirs, and ornaments
recast the banal into a magical
world of carouseling shadows.
Tel: + 46 40-34 12 93
Web site
<www.konsthall.malmo.se>
Museum of Arts and Design
|eu 'c||
Viola Frey
||co| |c, ., .o:o
Best known for monumental,
intensely colored figural sculptures
that explore issues of gender, cul-
tural iconography, and art history,
Frey was a pioneer in contemporary
ceramics. Together with Peter
Voulkos and Robert Arneson, she
played a pivotal role in the craft-as-
art drama. She was also a forerun-
ner in the quest for self-revelation,
creating works based on personal
relationships, recollections, and
family history, and a technical inno-
vator who consistently explored
new approaches to clay, glass, and
bronze. This exhibition features her
colossal figures, as well as a selection
of paintings, ceramic plates, and
bricolagescollage-like clay assem-
blages inspired by found junk and
flea market purchases.
Tel: 212.299.7777
Web site <www.madmuseum.org>
Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen
|c||e|ocm
Carsten Hller
||co| /||| .,, .o:o
Hller considers his work as a series
of experiments and viewers as his
subjects, challenging assumptions
about perception, sensory experi-
ence, pacing, balance, and time. His
recent projects are based on an ini-
tially simple mathematical opera-
tion that divides, then keeps re-
dividing space and objects into two.
But simple beginnings always spin
out of control in Hllers hands, and
here, uncomplicated division
inevitably leads to the complex spi-
ral formula behind u|n|n ||c|
(a floating aluminum room). Divided
Divided also features a new group
of his signature mushrooms, an
enormous mobile composed of seven
birdcages complete with singing
canaries, and a reconfigured presen-
tation of |e.c|.|n |c|e| |ccm,
which can be booked for overnight
stays, giving guests 24-hour access
to the whole museum.
Tel: + 31 (0) 10 44.19.400
Web site <www.boijmans.nl>
Museum of Modern Art
|eu 'c||
Ernesto Neto
||co| /||| .o, .o:o
Netos evocative installations
offer sensual experiences that create
associations with the body and
other organisms. He describes his
works as an exploration and repre-
sentation of the bodys landscape
from within, encouraging viewers to
interact with and physically engage
these strange environments by feel-
ing, smelling, and touching, as well
as looking. This special presen-
tation focuses on one of his most
Top left: Viola Frey, Non-Endangered
Beaver. Left: Ernesto Neto, Nave-
denga. Top right: Carsten Hller,
Swinging Curve. Above: Hans-Peter
Feldmann, Golden Shoes with Pins
on Velvet.
F
R
E
Y
:
M
I
C
H
A
E
L
T
R
O
P
E
A
,
C
H
I
C
A
G
O
,
A
R
T
I
S
T
S
L
E
G
A
C
Y
F
O
U
N
D
A
T
I
O
N
/
L
I
C
E
N
S
E
D
B
Y
V
A
G
A
,
N
Y
/
N
E
T
O
:
O
R
E
N
S
L
O
R
,
C
O
U
R
T
E
S
Y
T
A
N
Y
A
B
O
N
A
K
D
A
R
G
A
L
L
E
R
Y
,
N
Y
/
H
L
L
E
R
:
A
T
T
I
L
I
O
M
A
R
A
N
Z
A
N
O
,
C
O
U
R
T
E
S
Y
G
A
G
O
S
I
A
N
G
A
L
L
E
R
Y
,
L
O
N
D
O
N
/
F
E
L
D
M
A
N
N
:
C
O
U
R
T
E
S
Y
M
A
L
M
K
O
N
S
T
H
A
L
L
________
_______________
sculpture
B
A
M S a
G E
F
sculpture
B
A
M S a
G E
F
important large-scale sculptures,
|c.eoenc (1998), which MoMA
acquired in 2007. Constructed of
Lycra, Styrofoam, sand, and aromatic
cloves, with rounded corners, orbed
appendages, and softened cham-
bers, this multi-part environment
of symbiotic oppositions suggests
both a fantastical spacecraft and
a protective womb.
Tel: 212.708.9400
Web site <www.moma.org>
Nasher Sculpture Center
|c||c
Jaume Plensa
||co| |c, ., .o:o
Using light, sound, text, and the
body, Plensas large-scale sculptures
and installations investigate
the intimate connections between
nature and culture. From open-work
calligraphic figures to towering
columns and shafts of light, from
complex orchestrations of new and
traditional media to the bare sim-
plicity of glass and steel, his works
can take a myriad of formsmost
recently, monumental, elegantly
distorted human heads. Regardless
of their outward appearance, these
frequently transparent and often
interactive works participate in
a wide-ranging humanistic project,
offering viewers a glimpse into the
nexus where art and language meet
biology and metaphysics. This show
features eight large-scale works
completed between 2004 and 2009,
highlighting the central role of
letters in human development and
Plensas thought.
Tel: 214.242.5100
Web site <www.
nashersculpturecenter.org>
Pulitzer Foundation for the Arts
| |co|
Gordon Matta-Clark
||co| |one ,, .o:o
Though his artistic career only lasted
a decade, Matta-Clark has exerted
a powerful influence on subsequent
artists and architects, emerging as
a key figure in the generation after
Minimalism. Focusing on the social,
psychological, and political particu-
larities of the urban context, he pur-
sued the transmutation of discarded
objects and spaceswhether build-
ings, rooms, public areas, or neigh-
borhoodsinto new entities filled
with hope and fantasy. In the most
well-known of his planned interven-
tions, he carved out sections of
abandoned buildings with a power
saw to transform place into a state
of mind by opening walls, creating
incisions that shifted everyday expe-
rience into extraordinary visual and
kinetic confrontations. When wreck-
ing balls destroyed these sculpted
structures, little remained beyond
photographs, films, and a few
building segments known as cuts.
This retrospective celebrates the
radical nature of Matta-Clarks work
with a complete selection of the
cuts, more than 50 photographs
and works on papers, as well as two
films that underscore the perfor-
mance-based social activism behind
his creative acts.
Tel: 314.754.1850
Web site <www.pulitzerarts.org>
Santa Monica Museum of Art
cn|c |cn|:c, tc|||c|n|c
Diana Thater
||co| /||| :,, .o:o
Thaters huge video installations,
which she calls sculptures with
images of nature in space, analyze
the complexities of the natural
world and how they relate to human
beings. An environmental activist
as well as artist, she uses moving
images of nature to dissolve archi-
tectural spaces and break down our
dominant subject/object attitude
toward the rest of the world. Her
new work, 3e|ueen :|en:e cno
|c|:, shifts the focus to explore
tensions between past and present,
fact and fiction, illusion and reality.
With the participation of renowned
magician Greg Wilson, Thater
explores archetypal stage tricks, the
magic of the movies, and our
desire to know versus the need to
suspend disbelief.
Tel: 310.586.6488
Web site <www.smmoa.org>
Above: Diana Thater, Between
Science and Magic (production
still). Top right: Jaume Plensa, I,
you, she, or he Right: Gordon
Matta-Clark, Bingo.
T
H
A
T
E
R
:
A
L
A
N
S
M
I
T
H
E
E
F
O
R
D
I
A
N
A
T
H
A
T
E
R
,
C
O
U
R
T
E
S
Y
H
A
U
S
E
R
&
W
I
R
T
H
,
L
O
N
D
O
N
A
N
D
D
A
V
I
D
Z
W
I
R
N
E
R
,
N
Y
/
M
A
T
T
A
-
C
L
A
R
K
:
F
R
A
N
C
O
I
S
R
O
B
E
R
T
,
E
S
T
A
T
E
O
F
G
O
R
D
O
N
M
A
T
T
A
-
C
L
A
R
K
/
A
R
T
I
S
T
R
I
G
H
T
S
S
O
C
I
E
T
Y
(
A
R
S
)
,
N
Y
/
P
L
E
N
S
A
:
W
I
L
L
I
A
M
J
.
H
E
B
E
R
T
,
C
O
U
R
T
E
S
Y
F
R
E
D
E
R
I
K
M
E
I
J
E
R
G
A
R
D
E
N
S
&
S
C
U
L
P
T
U
R
E
P
A
R
K
,
G
R
A
N
D
R
A
P
I
D
S
,
M
I
______________
___
sculpture
B
A
M S a
G E
F
sculpture
B
A
M S a
G E
F
18 Sculpture 29.3
F
I
T
C
H
:
S
T
E
V
E
N
L
A
Z
E
N
/
K
A
P
O
O
R
:
A
N
I
S
H
K
A
P
O
O
R
/
M
O
O
R
E
:
D
E
T
R
O
I
T
I
N
S
T
I
T
U
T
E
O
F
A
R
T
S
R
E
P
R
O
D
U
C
E
D
B
Y
P
E
R
M
I
S
S
I
O
N
O
F
T
H
E
H
E
N
R
Y
M
O
O
R
E
F
O
U
N
D
A
T
I
O
N
Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum
|eu 'c||
Contemplating the Void
||co| /||| .3, .o:o
Since the Guggenheims opening in
1959, its Frank Lloyd Wright-designed
rotunda has inspired, provoked, and
challenged artists with its eccentric,
organic flow. The Aristotle-defying
central void, in particular, has tanta-
lized (or threatened) with its in-your-
face emptiness, prompting many
responses over the years, both in the
form of site-specific installations and
innovative exhibition designs. For its
50th anniversary, the Guggenheim
invited more than 200 artists, archi-
tects, and designers to face the abyss
and submit their dream interven-
tions. Unlike realized projects by
Matthew Barney, Nam June Paik, Cai
Guo-Qiang, Jenny Holzer, and Ann
Hamilton, these renderings leave
practicality, and reality, behind to cre-
ate ideal visions that use the muse-
ums signature blank space to return
to primordial nature, diffuse concrete
mass with mystical, diaphanous
effects, and launch futuristic con-
structions.
Tel: 212.423.3500
Web site <www.guggenheim.org>
Suyama Space
ec|||e
Claudia Fitch
||co| /||| .,, .o:o
Although Fitch is best known for her
witty personal takes on pop culture
and art historical icons, she also
creates rich sculptural tableaux that
use architecture and geometry to
investigate space. A range of formal
devices, including grids, framing,
textural variation, underlying forms
and structures, and density bal-
anced with openness, awaken spa-
tial sensibilities and the imagination.
||cc||n |e:|cn|m (n||||coe;,
her new landscape-style installa-
tion, floats just above the floor, its
rich patterning dramatically punctu-
ated by a cantilevered armature
descending from an adjacent wall.
Scaled and placed in a dynamic
relationship to the Suyama Space
gallery, this rhythmic study in repe-
tition and contrast playfully rein-
vents the industrial, mechanical past
of its host space.
Tel: 206.256.0809
Web site
<www.suyamapetersondeguchi.
com/art>
Tate Britain
|cnocn
Henry Moore
||co| /oo| 3, .o:o
Recent Moore exhibitions have
parsed his in-depth knowledge of
natural materials and forms, his
treatment of the figure and abstrac-
tion, and his architectural sense of
space. This show, the largest selec-
tion of his work to be assembled in
a generation, takes a much more
comprehensive approach, with 150
works focusing on the radical,
experimental, and sometimes darkly
charged underpinnings of Britains
most- championed sculptor. In the
wake of World War I, Moores works
expressed new ideas about the
human body and human psychology,
reflecting the rise of psychoanalysis
(with its sexual obsessions) and
growing public anxiety over the
traumas of war. Carvings from the
1920s and 30s, including iconic
mother and child groups, drawings
of Londoners sheltering from the
Blitz, and the celebrated 1950s and
60s abstractions reflect the
humanitarian anguish and political
uncertainty at the heart of the 20th
century.
Tel: + 44 20 7887 8008
Web site <www.tate.org.uk>
Top left: Anish Kapoor, Untitled
(detail), from Contemplating the
Void. Left: Henry Moore, Reclining
Figure. Above: Claudia Fitch,
Floating Mechanism (nightshade).
sculpture
B
A
M S a
G E
F
sculpture
B
A
M S a
G E
F
itinerary
Sculpture April 2010
H
U
T
C
H
I
N
S
:
D
A
N
K
V
I
T
K
A
,
C
O
U
R
T
E
S
Y
S
M
A
L
L
A
P
R
O
J
E
C
T
S
,
N
Y
,
A
N
D
D
E
R
E
K
E
L
L
E
R
G
A
L
L
E
R
Y
,
N
Y
/
W
H
I
T
E
:
F
R
E
D
R
I
K
N
I
L
S
E
N
,
C
O
U
R
T
E
S
Y
G
R
E
E
N
G
R
A
S
S
I
,
L
O
N
D
O
N
A
N
D
1
3
0
1
P
E
,
L
O
S
A
N
G
E
L
E
S
Whitney Museum of American Art
|eu 'c||
Whitney Biennial
||co| |c, ,o, .o:o
Reflecting current recessionary aus-
terities, the 2010 Whitney Biennial
is leaner and meaner than in recent
years, with works by only 55 artists,
all in one location. Curatorial
ambition appears likewise subdued:
Francesco Bonami and associate
curator Gary Carrion-Murayari have
rejected any kind of thematic over-
lay; according to Bonami, The
theme is the year2010which is
the title. Still, among the usual mix
of established and emerging artists,
a few trends come to the fore.
Young artists are thinking smaller,
in human-scale attitudes, perhaps
as a result of the general economic
mood, perhaps due to crippling stu-
dent loans. Modernism is newly
revalidated, with abstraction pro-
viding a safe haven in a storm of
instabilities. In order to capture the
anxiety and optimism of the last
two years, Bonami and Carrion-
Murayari have included more new
names and approaches than weve
seen in a while. Theyve also made
the long-overdue decision to sepa-
rate film and video from the other
mediums. Their plan to evoke differ-
ent moods on different floors of the
building assembles a wide range of
individual gestures, histories, and
improvised encounters.
Tel: 1.800.WHITNEY
Web site <www.whitney.org>
Top: Jessica Jackson Hutchins, Couch For a Long Time. Above: Pae White,
Smoke Knows. Both from the Whitney Biennial.
__________________
_________________________
sculpture
B
A
M S a
G E
F
sculpture
B
A
M S a
G E
F
IokM AssoctAts
Northala Fields
London
Four grass-covered conical mounds built from displaced soil
and other construction detritus form the focal point of Northala
Fields, a new multi-use community park in outer London.
Designed by a team from FoRM Associates led by artist Peter
Fink and architect Igor Marko, this creative solution to waste dis-
posal cost local citizens nothing while providing them with open
space, recreational facilities, and an engaging bit of environmental
art. The Borough of Ealing, which commissioned the project,
acquired the neglected land in 1997 but lacked sufficient funds
for its redevelopment. Fink and Marko, in collaboration with
ecologist Peter Neal, were selected after a competition in 2000
their dynamic proposal, as Fink describes, addressed the bor-
oughs Land Art aspirations, had elements of social participa-
tion, biodiversity, [and] cultivation, and, most crucially, incor-
porated 1.5 million cubic meters of construction refuse, which
provided $10.5 millionenough to fund the entire project.
The process was complex: construction companies brought
detritus from major sites like Heathrows Terminal 5 and the
Wembley Stadium reconstruction, paying to dump at Northala
Fields just as they would at a regular landfill. Using this material
saved landfill space elsewhere and shortened hauling time, sav-
ing resources and contribut[ing] to shrinking the ecological foot-
print of London, Fink says. Local politics briefly threatened the
process (when the borough government changed hands, the
newly elected party had different plans for the revenue), but resi-
dents advocated for their park and ultimately prevailed.
Sited along the A40 highway, the mounds at Northala Fields
range from 60 to 100 feet high. The tallest supports a spiraling
pathway that leads to its summit where an observation platform
provides views of London. Other features of the 18.5-hectare
park include playgrounds, fishing ponds, bicycling and walking
paths, and a boating pond. FoRMs successful land intervention,
realized through local involvement and creative planning, serves
an appreciative London community and offers a lesson in envi-
ronmentally responsible public art.
0An 6uAtwtn
Propagate
Hobart, Tasmania, Australia
Dean Chatwins concept for Propagate reflects his interest in life
cycles, interdependence, and waste. Sited in Hobarts Royal
Tasmanian Botanical Gardens, the ephemeral work was formally
simple: fallen leaves from 16 oak trees were raked into a series
of rings around each tree. As Chatwin emphasizes, No material
was added or subtracted, only rearranged. Red-brown leaves
formed concentric patterns on the lawn, the outer bands around
an individual tree eventually colliding with those of its neigh-
bors: This interference represents how different elements within
an ecosystem interact. Chatwin was initially invited to create
the work for a sustainability festival, but RTBG commissioners
asked him to make it separately. Chatwin says, The concept
developed from the site, in particular, the relative positions of
the trees within the spaceI began to see the trees as being anal-
ogous to rocks thrown into water.
He wanted to do a sculpture with deciduous leavesbecause
they are such a powerful symbol of seasonal change and [visibly]
represent the flow of energy through the natural environment.
Since deciduous trees are not native to Tasmania, the RTBGs
20 Sculpture 29.3
F
O
R
M
A
S
S
O
C
I
A
T
E
S
commissions
Left and detail: FoRM Associates, Northala Fields, 200309. Clean demolition
spoil, plantings, and water, approximately 2,000 x 1,500 x 105 ft.
commissions
sculpture
B
A
M S a
G E
F
sculpture
B
A
M S a
G E
F
large collection worked perfectly: The
site was located adjacent to a main path
within the oak collection[where] visitors
came across the works unexpectedlyThis
element of surprise was an added bonus.
Although fallen leaves are often treated
as waste, Chatwin is acutely aware of
[their] importancewithin an ecosystem
[as food for] animals at the bottom of the
food chain which process the leaves,
enabling plants to access nutrients. The
process of creating the workraking
leaves within an 18,000-square-foot area
was meditative, he says. It was there-
fore not surprising, though initially unin-
tentional, that the completed form resem-
bled a Zen gravel garden or a trees
growth rings. Chatwin finished Propagate
in June 2009 and watched as foraging
birds and the wind gradually blurred and
displaced the patterning: After about five
weeks, Propagate succumbed to the ele-
ments, and only small portions of the pat-
tern remained, reminding me somewhat
of artifacts of a lost civilization.
Stvn Stot
Two of em
Reading, PA
Leading a team of 16 volunteers for four
days, Steven Siegel recently created Two
of em, a pair of outdoor sculptures made
of bamboo and recyclables on the campus
of Penn State Berks. Siegel, whose work
is often fabricated from natural materials
and waste products, approached the pro-
ject without a precise concept, more inter-
ested in negotiating the constraints of
materials, volunteer help, and time avail-
able to him on campus. Marilyn Fox, the
school administrator who coordinated the
project, assisted Siegel by locating materials
(the bamboo comes from a grove at the
school) and choosing the centrally located
site, adjacent to a walking path through
the campus. She also recruited a group of
very enthusiastic volunteers: As our col-
lege campus does not have an art program,
it was interesting to see that students in
engineering, business, world studies, and
other programs were eager to work with
us. The students assisted Siegel in build-
ing wooden frames, bundling the recy-
clables inside, and encapsulating the bales
in bamboo.
The two cylindrical sculptures, which
rest on their sides to reveal their contents,
demonstrate Siegels interest in container
formseach unit is a container filled with
additional aluminum and plastic contain-
ers. A layer of bamboo wraps around each
form, exposing the recyclables only at the
ends. The colorful cans and bottlessome
were generated on campus and some were
borrowed, to be returned when the work is
taken downcontrast with the rough, leafy
texture of the bamboo. Placed at an irregu-
lar angle in relation to each other, from cer-
tain perspectives, the sculptures seem to
be having a tte--tte. Siegel describes his
work, which is on view indefinitely, as an
intermission in the solid waste streaman
arrested snapshot of what people produce,
consume, throw away, and grow.
Elizabeth Lynch
T
O
P
:
C
O
U
R
T
E
S
Y
T
H
E
A
R
T
I
S
T
/
B
O
T
T
O
M
:
M
A
R
I
L
Y
N
J
.
F
O
X
Juries are convened each month to select works for Commissions. Information on recently
completed commissions, along with quality 35mm slides/transparencies or high-resolution digital
images (300 dpi at 4 x 5 in. minimum) and an SASE for return of slides, should be sent to:
Commissions, Sculpture, 1633 Connecticut Avenue NW, 4th Floor, Washington, DC 20009.
Left: Dean Chatwin, Propagate, 2009. Fallen oak
leaves, approximately 18,000 sq. ft. Below: Steven
Siegel, Two of em, 2009. Bamboo, recycled cans
and bottles, wire, wood, plastic sheeting, and rub-
ber hose, 2 elements, 10 ft. diameter each.
sculpture
B
A
M S a
G E
F
sculpture
B
A
M S a
G E
F
sculpture
B
A
M S a
G E
F
sculpture
B
A
M S a
G E
F
A Life
in
Sculpture
BY BARNABY WRIGHT In 1960, Phillip King returned to London from a trip to Greece, cleared the
entire contents of his studio, repainted it from top to bottom, and started
afresh. The work that he made over the next three years helped to revolution-
ize British sculpture and announced him as one of the most important and radi-
cal sculptors of his generation. The eight works shown at his first one-man
exhibition in London in 1964 have now become icons of modern British sculp-
ture, notably Declaration (1961), Rosebud (1962), Genghis Khan (1963), and
Tra-La-La (1963). Their daring and strident originality is undimmed to this day,
just as King hoped it would be: I want people to stand aghast for a second,
and I hope theyll do it again and again with my best work.
1
These extraordi-
nary sculptures were just the beginning. Each decade since has brought new
works of exceptional vitality and innovation, from joyful masterpieces in brightly
painted steel, such as Dunstable Reel (1970), to the raw materiality of pieces
like Tracer (1977), and on to a new flowering of color in his recent work, epito-
mized by Sun Roots II (2008). For more than half a century, King has forged
ahead with an unwavering commitment to extending the expressive possibili-
ties of sculptural form. He has continually explored new materials and processes,
testing the traditions of sculpture while challenging and redefining the successes
of his past work. Kings contribution to modern art is celebrated this year with
a Lifetime Achievement Award from the International Sculpture Center.
Kings memories of his childhood in Tunis, where he was born in 1934, are of
hunting for Roman coins around Kheredine, near Carthage. Instead he found a
large vein of clay and used it to model animal figurines, which he sold to family
and friends. He came to London with his family shortly after World War II and
later spent a formative year in Paris as part of his National Service. He traces
his love of sculpture to time spent in the Louvre and the experience of running
his hands over an ancient Greek marble carving of a womans torso to try and
understand its subtlety and power: I knew instinctively that there was more
Opposite: Red Erect, 1998. Steel and aluminum,
90 x 95 x 55 cm. Above: Sun and Moon, 2007.
Painted stainless steel, 860 x 480 x 300 cm. O
P
P
O
S
I
T
E
:
C
O
U
R
T
E
S
Y
B
E
R
N
A
R
D
J
A
C
O
B
S
O
N
G
A
L
L
E
R
Y
,
L
O
N
D
O
N
/
T
H
I
S
P
A
G
E
:
R
.
B
A
M
B
E
R
sculpture
B
A
M S a
G E
F
sculpture
B
A
M S a
G E
F
to the form than I could seeI discovered
that with sculpture things go on beneath
the surface that you are aware of but can-
not put into words. The encounter made
him realize that the sculptors eye has
to be a surrogate for the bodyyou feel
bodily through your eyes.
2
In 1955, King returned to Britain to take
up a place at Christs College Cambridge
to study Modern Languages but quickly
found himself drawn back to sculpture.
He began to work in clay, producing a
group of expressive figurative sculptures.
In 1957, after just two years teaching
himself to model, he hired a small gallery
space at Heffers Bookshop in Cambridge
and held his first exhibition. Seizing the
initiative, he sent a private view invitation
and return train ticket from London
to Cambridge to Anthony Caro, who was
teaching at Saint Martins. Caro came,
was impressed, and offered King a place
at Saint Martins. There, King continued
to develop his figurative work, modeling
in clay and plaster. To this day, he identi-
fies himself principally as a modeler rather
than a carver. This set him apart from the
direct carving tradition of avant- garde
British sculpture, which he encountered
particularly in the work of Henry Moore,
for whom he worked as an assistant from
1959 to 1960. By this time, King was allow-
ing his expressive modeling to distort his
figures, sometimes to the point of near
abstraction. They demonstrate a powerful
feeling for bodily form, with affinities to
the sculpture of Matisse and Germaine
Richier, among others. But, for King, these
early works were too closely yoked to the
climate of British sculpture that had domi-
nated the postwar period and was fast
feeling outdated. In the 1950s, themes of
anxiety, vulnerability, and the wounded
body abounded, from the so-called geom-
etry of fear sculptors, such as Lynn Chad-
wick and Kenneth Armitage, to the early
works of Caro and Eduardo Paolozzi. It
was somehow terribly like scratching your
own wounds, King recalled, an inter-
national style with everyone sharing the
same neuroses.
3
By the time that King took a Boise Schol-
arship to travel to Greece in 1960, he had
joined the staff at Saint Martins. He left
for Greece deeply concerned about the
course of his work. A visit to Documenta II
in Kassel, where he saw the work of the
American Abstract Expressionists, con-
firmed for him that a gulf existed between
modern sculpture and the vitality of mod-
ern painting. But he was skeptical as to
whether abstraction could allow him to
maintain the fundamental connection with
nature that he sought in his sculpture. His
visits to the Acropolis were transformative:
It seemed to me that, in Greece, archi-
tecture grew so naturally out of the envi-
ronment, it wasnt something just plonked
down like a formulaIt seemed of nature
and not about nature.
4
Here was an
uncompromising abstraction, organized
by a profound understanding of natural
principles. For King, it opened the possi-
bility of using abstraction to explore mans
place within nature without trying to con-
vey that experience by imitating natural
appearances, however expressively.
When he returned to London, he
destroyed most of his clay and plaster
works. In the blank space of his freshly
painted studio, he made Window piece
(196061) and Declaration (1961) as his
first major statements in sculptural abstrac-
tion. Both embody an austere classicism,
stripped of obvious associations and allu-
sions, their energy invested fully in the
purity and strength of their formal ele-
ments. Declaration, a sequence of circles,
squares, and crosses made of rendered
cement and joined together with a steel
bara sort of totem pole of Platonic forms
laid on its sidemarks Kings growing
need to work from his intellect rather
than proceeding from intuition and emo-
tion alone. His sketchbooks from this period
are threaded through with writings, which
try to formulate the general principles and
universal underpinnings that he sought to
explore in his sculpture. But his was not a
search for ideal forms as Declaration might
initially suggest. Kings writings and sketches
are not preconceived blueprints for sculpture
24 Sculpture 29.3
L
E
F
T
:
C
O
U
R
T
E
S
Y
N
E
W
A
R
T
C
E
N
T
R
E
,
R
O
C
H
E
C
O
U
R
T
,
S
A
L
I
S
B
U
R
Y
,
W
I
L
T
S
H
I
R
E
,
U
.
K
.
/
R
I
G
H
T
:
C
O
U
R
T
E
S
Y
B
E
R
N
A
R
D
J
A
C
O
B
S
O
N
G
A
L
L
E
R
Y
,
L
O
N
D
O
N
Left: Rosebud, 1962. Plastic, 152.5 x 183 x 183 cm. Above: Spring-a-Ling,
1983. Steel plate, mesh, steel cable, and chain, 195.5 x 216 x 138.5 cm.
sculpture
B
A
M S a
G E
F
sculpture
B
A
M S a
G E
F
but a way of energizing himself to work.
His sculptures emerge from their making
and within the limits of their material,
rather than being made to plan. Yet at the
same time, they aspire to reveal universally
viable principlesforms and compositions
that transcend personal emotions, local cir-
cumstances, and external references. This
was the sculptural challenge that emerged
as King moved into abstraction, and it has
remained central to his work ever since.
In the early 1960s, this challenge led
King to think about the very origins of
sculpture and what might constitute the
first sculptural act. The work of Brancusi
seemed to suggest that stacking was pri-
mal. However, the idea that lifting and
leaning may have equal claim as a sculp-
tural origin captivated King (examples were
close at hand in the Neolithic standing
stones of the British Isles). Drift (1961)
explored the idea with a large plaster
form supported by two lengths of wood
leaning against one another. This inverted
V-shaped form gave rise to the develop-
ment of the cone in the seminal Rosebud.
Although connected to Kings initial exper-
iments in abstraction, Rosebud is a sculp-
ture of breathtaking originality that could
not have been anticipated from what had
gone before. Made of plastic, which King
modeled and shaped by hand and painted
vibrant pink, it was a provocative state-
ment of what a radically new sculptural
language could achieve. Its power lies in
its potent combination of gravitas and play.
Rosebud is the result of serious formal
concerns, which revolve around issues of
interiority and exteriority, volume and
mass. The outer pink plastic skin appears
to stretch tight around an inner blue-green
skin, glimpsed along an open slit on one
side. But the body covered by these skins
is invisiblean absent presence, volume
without mass. As we ponder the implica-
tions of these formal ideas, the title, Rose-
bud, continually pricks our consciousness.
It pulls us into the realm of representa-
tion, which the sculpture itself both con-
firms and denies, and teases that our pro-
found contemplations might all be based
on an enormous pink plastic flower.
In Genghis Khan, the invisible core of
the cone appears to cleave apart the outer
T
O
P
:
C
O
U
R
T
E
S
Y
N
E
W
A
R
T
C
E
N
T
R
E
,
R
O
C
H
E
C
O
U
R
T
,
S
A
L
I
S
B
U
R
Y
,
W
I
L
T
S
H
I
R
E
,
U
.
K
.
/
C
E
N
T
E
R
:
J
O
N
T
Y
W
I
L
D
E
Above: Reel 3, 1969. Mild steel, sprayed and stove-enameled zinc, approximately 257 x 500 x 340 cm.
Below: Ascona, 1972. Painted mild steel, 231 x 457 x 457 cm.
Above: Shogun, 1980. Wood and steel, 216 x 254 x 188 cm.
sculpture
B
A
M S a
G E
F
sculpture
B
A
M S a
G E
F
skin, as the inner sheath floods out of the
bottom and sides and explodes out of the
top like some erupting volcano. Again the
title cues us to a representational or even
symbolic reading. But our inability to map
such associations convincingly onto Kings
sculptures confirms their independence.
The thrill comes from the great risks that
King takes in balancing sculptural integrity
with the dangers of its undoing.
Coming out of a sculptural age of latent
chromophobia (to borrow David Batche-
lors term) and anxiety-ridden seriousness,
Kings work of the 1960s produced a keenly
felt and radical impact. In 1965, he was
a prominent presence in the Whitechapel
Gallerys landmark The New Generation,
which made the case for a new dawn in
British sculpture with works by William
Tucker, David Annesley, Tim Scott, and
other young artists. King was quickly iden-
tified as a leading figure of this powerful
new flowering of talent. He was given
his own exhibition at the Whitechapel in
1968 and that same year represented
Britain at the Venice Biennale alongside
Bridget Riley.
Throughout his career, Kings pursuit of
sculptural invention has been driven by
an exploration of different materials. In
the later 1960s and early 1970s, steel
replaced fiberglass and plastic as his prin-
cipal medium. His establishment of a large
studio space outside London in Dunstable,
Bedfordshire, allowed him to work on a
bigger scale with large steel sheets. The
work of this period is invested with his
earlier ideas about sculptural origins.
Dunstable Reel (1970) clearly maintains
a sense of its origins, as if cut and folded
upwards from the horizontal plane of the
steel sheet. But the result of its release
is a joyfully liberated Matissian dance of
form and color. The weightlessness of
Kings sculptural choreography belies the
actual weight of its steel sheets, working
in defiance of gravitys pull.
Intense color remains central to Kings
work of this period. Always applied to the
surface of his sculptures, it acts as an inde-
pendent and transformative element,
rather than being integral to the material.
Kings ability to use color to affect sculp-
tural form is nowhere more evident than
in the four-part Blue Blaze (1967), which
relies on its blaze of color to unify the
somewhat disparate forms into a whole
composition. But if color changes form,
then the reverse is also true. The slanted,
stepped forms catch the light differently,
altering the intensity and shade of the blue
as if they were differently colored brush-
strokes.
In 1969, King made his first trip to Japan.
He remembers the powerful effect of expe-
riencing a culture that believed in con-
necting with [raw] materials on a very
basic level.
5
This discovery surfaced in his
work from the mid-1970s onwards as he
began to use unpainted steel and roughly
hewn materials such as slate and wood,
exploiting the power and beauty of their
natural surfaces. These elemental quali-
ties are matched by a renewed effort to
address the relationship between sculptural
form and the forces of nature. In works such
as Tracer, elements strain against one
another as if being pulled by a great gravita-
tional force. Rather than springing upwards
like Dunstable Reel, here sculpture is con-
ceived as a suspended moment of tension
between the hand of nature and the hand
of the artist pulling in different directions.
In other works, such as Shogun (1980),
thick lengths of steel tangled with tree
trunks maintain a precarious balance as if
tossed together and deposited after a great
flood. And yet the artfully arranged coil
of machine chain filling one of the works
empty spaces asserts the presence of the
sculptors handas if announcing that
this was no accident.
In 1978, King was commissioned to cre-
ate a work for the newly completed Euro-
pean Patent Office in Munich. The architect
invited him to challenge his building, and
King was not shy. Cross-bend (197880)
springs off the roof in an energetic tumble
of massive steel blocks. It undoubtedly
challenges the ordered formalism of the
building itself, but rather than subverting
the architecture, Cross-bend incorporates
it into one large sculptural unity, reminding
us that Kings sculptural vision grew from
his understanding of classical architecture.
Cross-bend dramatizes the invisible action
26 Sculpture 29.3
C
O
U
R
T
E
S
Y
B
E
R
N
A
R
D
J
A
C
O
B
S
O
N
G
A
L
L
E
R
Y
,
L
O
N
D
O
N
Maquette for Obelisk Drift, 1994. Bronze, 28.5 x 32 x 17.8 cm.
sculpture
B
A
M S a
G E
F
sculpture
B
A
M S a
G E
F
of gravity and the dynamic interaction of
mass, volume, and space that would oth-
erwise go unnoticed. For King, sculpture
is the art of the invisible, and it responds
to forms and forces that are known but not
seen, as he first realized as a teenager in
the Louvre.
King, who was appointed CBE in 1974,
has served as a trustee of the Tate Gallery
(196769) and was elected as an Associate
of the Royal Academy of Art in 1977. His
numerous solo exhibitions have included
major retrospectives at the Hayward Gallery
(1981) and the Forte Belvedere in Florence
(1997), where he was the first British sculp-
tor since Henry Moore to be honored with
an exhibition. King has continued to teach
throughout his career, for many years at
Saint Martins (195978), but he has also
assumed professorships at the Hochschule
der Knste, Berlin (197980) and the Royal
College of Art (198090). When he was
elected as a Royal Academician in 1990, he
took up the post of Professor of Sculpture
at the Royal Academy Schools, where he
continues to teach. He was elected Presi-
dent of the Royal Academy in 1999, a post
he held until 2004.
Such standing might have encouraged
him to rest on his laurels, but he has
remained a risk-taker. In the mid-1980s he
began to explore symbolic figuration (along-
side his abstract work), breaking the ulti-
mate avant-garde taboo of his earlier years.
King had been aware of figurative elements
emerging in Red Between (1971), but they
had not been given further expression. The
death of his 19-year-old son Antony in a
diving accident in 1984 directed King into
the realm of the memorial and the monu-
mental, which ushered in a new sculptural
language. The obelisk became a recurrent
theme, epitomized by works such as Monu-
ment for Hiroshima (198788). This would
lead to the Fire King series (198992),
a personal combination of symbol, figura-
tion, and narrative arranged in surrealistic
compositions that King modeled in the
flower-arranging material Oasis and then
cast in bronze.
Kings desire to push sculptural bound-
aries and to explore different materials
has continued unabated. In the mid-1990s
he returned to clay, this time inspired by
Japanese pottery. The outcome was an
astonishing group of ceramic sculptures
exploring the form of the vessel; their
subversive drive is matched by a deep rev-
erence for the traditions of both sculpture
and pottery. His 2008 exhibition Living
with Color made a further unexpected
conjunction, this time between sculp-
ture and furniture. The show blurred the
boundaries between the two in ways
that questioned sculptures status and
sent up the idea of arts self-imposed
divorce from everyday lifemost bril-
liantly expressed in Hat Stand and Bin
(Homage to Malevich).
A visit to Kings London studio offers
tantalizing suggestions of what might
come next. One is presented with an ever-
swelling sea of brightly colored maquettes
that jostle with earlier pieces in an array
of different materials. New large-scale
sculptures, such as Sun Roots II, demon-
strate the inventive power of Kings cre-
ative process and his remarkable ability
to turn his own sculptural tradition,
accrued over the last half century, to new
account. Almost exactly 50 years
after his birth as a modern sculptor is an
appropriate time to celebrate Kings life-
time achievement. However, a walk around
the studio, with King excitedly discussing
developing works and new ideas, makes
it quite clear that his achievements are
far from complete.
Barnaby Wright is the Daniel Katz Curator
of 20th Century Art at the Courtauld
Gallery in London.
F
R
A
S
E
R
M
A
R
R
,
C
O
U
R
T
E
S
Y
B
E
R
N
A
R
D
J
A
C
O
B
S
O
N
G
A
L
L
E
R
Y
,
L
O
N
D
O
N
Notes
1
King quoted in Norbert Lynton, Latest Developments in British Sculpture, Art and Literature 1964: No. 2.
2
Interview with the author, 2009.
3
King quoted in Charles Harrison, Phillip King Sculpture 196068, Artforum December 1968.
4
King quoted in Lynn Cooke, The Sculpture of Phillip King, 196972, unpublished MA thesis, Courtauld Institute of Art, 1978.
5
Interview with the author, op. cit.
Still Life with Moon, 1998. Plastic and nao paper, 42 x 35 x 18 cm.
sculpture
B
A
M S a
G E
F
sculpture
B
A
M S a
G E
F
sculpture
B
A
M S a
G E
F
sculpture
B
A
M S a
G E
F
William Tucker is a sculptor whose work and conduct embody the conscience
of his medium. There is a pervasive sense, in all he doesin his widely influen-
tial writings about sculpture as well as in the work itselfof agitated industry,
whether he is striving to define, to eliminate, to amass, or to complicate.
Radical shifts in his way of working indicate an almost existential search for
the essence of sculpture, and an equally strident defense of it.
There is often a palpable tension between complexity and singularity in
Tuckers work: one senses both a determination to force materials or processes
to yield their maximum and, in a competing direction, to give expression to
a particular emotion or insight. A similar dichotomy, a bracing of extremes,
carries across to a consideration of his career as a whole, for Tuckers jour-
ney over 50 years of sculptural activity has taken him from one resolute stylis-
tic and procedural position to another.
His life has traversed comparable terrain. A Briton, born in Egypt and raised
in England and Ireland, he moved mid-way through his career first to Canada
and then to the United States, where he is now a citizen. The Lifetime Achieve-
ment Award bestowed on Tucker by the International Sculpture Center throws
into relief the striking disparity between his mature achievements in one cen-
ter and the next. Take a representative piece from his English period, one
of his Cats Cradle series of steel rod constructions (1971), for instance,
O
P
P
O
S
I
T
E
:
C
O
U
R
T
E
S
Y
M
C
K
E
E
G
A
L
L
E
R
Y
,
N
Y
/
T
H
I
S
P
A
G
E
:
C
O
U
R
T
E
S
Y
M
A
R
T
I
N
Z
.
M
A
R
G
U
L
I
E
S
C
O
L
L
E
C
T
I
O
N
,
M
I
A
M
I
Opposite: Emperor, 2002. Bronze,
65 x 78 x 41 in. This page: The Rim,
1961. Steel, 13.75 x 13.75 x 6.75 ft.
BY DAVID COHEN
William
Tucker
FROM THE FORMAL
TO THE PRIMEVAL
sculpture
B
A
M S a
G E
F
sculpture
B
A
M S a
G E
F
and set it next to a trademark monumental
bronze from the American period, such as
Okeanos (1987). The contrast is almost
caricaturallike an effete youth next to a
beefy hulk. The earlier work is a fastidiously
streamlined, skeletal, three-dimensional
drawing, while its companion is a gargantu-
an massed volume that reads like an unruly
cross between a meteorite and a stray limb
(or a turd, as some commentators have
indecorously observed). They seem to come
out of entirely different aesthetics. The
steel construction is exclusively optical,
concerned with shifting perspectives of
lines in space. The mammoth bronze cast-
ing, a belligerently awkward, 12.5-foot-
high lump that resists attempts to grasp
its totality, lays claim to touch (despite
its scatological connotation) at least as
strongly as it does to sight. The Cats
Cradle works are as ethereal as Okeanos
is grounded.
And yet, for all the extremity in contrast,
the sculptural evolution that has propelled
this restless thinker/maker has never
entailed a gratuitous lurching from one
form to the next. On the contrary, each
development turns out, in retrospect, to
have been born of inner necessity, accom-
panied by self-effacingly expressed acknowl-
edgement of dissatisfaction with a previous
way of working, despite the rigor and
integrity of that earlier position.
This one-man paradigm shift, however,
does not entail a clean break or clear-cut
epiphany. Echoes and corresponding antic-
ipations between concerns from one period
to the next frustrate neat categorization.
Inevitably, if before and after are viewed
as opposing camps, each holds a hostage.
Sphinx (1980) is an imaginary casting of
the negative spacea proto-Rachel White-
readdescribed within the mild steel out-
line construction of an earlier piece titled
Building a Wall in the Air (1978). A return
to this open-construction idiom occurs quite
recently, in Victory (2001), made when
Tucker was entirely ensconced in his volu-
metric, cast, modeled mode of sculpture.
Victory won an international competition
for a memorial to the Disappeared of Argen-
30 Sculpture 29.3
C
O
U
R
T
E
S
Y
M
C
K
E
E
G
A
L
L
E
R
Y
,
N
Y
Left: Dancer, 200204. Plaster, 92 x 93 x 94 in.
Below: Atreus, 1987. Bronze, 46.5 x 43 x 23 in.
sculpture
B
A
M S a
G E
F
sculpture
B
A
M S a
G E
F
tinas infamous Dirty War of the late 1970s.
For such a commission, casting a solid lump
seemed both impractical and inappropriate.
A broken-triangle pediment directly recalls
an earlier formal language, which, despite
a lack of any such intended symbolism, takes
on new resonance in Buenos Aires to embody
the absent-presence of los desaparecidos.
And yet, there is no escaping the almost
violent contrast between the British Tucker
and the American Tucker. When Tucker left
Britain in the 1970s, no one on either side
of the Atlantic would have guessed that he
was on track to be the late-20th-century
heir to a monumentalist tradition. It is true
that he was turned on to sculpture, like so
many of his generation, by Henry Moore,
whose heroic fallen warrior, seen at an
open-air sculpture exhibition in Londons
Holland Park, galvanized the young Tucker,
then an undergraduate at Oxford, to think
of sculpture as his vocation. But Tucker was
closely associated in the 1960s with a group
of young sculptors who broke decisively
(some would say oedipally) with Moores
romantic humanism. Led by Anthony Caro,
Moores assertively independent former
assistant, these artists were committed to
severely pared-down, geometric abstraction
and a formalist, Modernist mode of inquiry.
Their work often played against gravity,
favoring an industrial vocabulary of new
materials and synthetic colors.
Tucker enrolled at Saint Martins School
of Art at an axiomatic moment for British
sculpture. He worked with Caro, after an
initial meeting at which the younger Tucker
stormed out in disgust. He was also deeply
influenced by his peers Isaac Witkin, with
whom he shared digs, and Phillip King,
whose intellectual leadership was the sub-
ject of such anxiety on Tuckers part that he
destroyed a group of early works when he
became convinced that they were deriva-
tive of King. All of these artists became life-
long friends. While British sculpture of this
new generation, with Tucker as a leading
member, constituted an international Mod-
ernist vanguard, it took its intellectual cue
from the late works of David Smith and the
criticism of Clement Greenberg. It is ironic,
therefore, for an artist whose career splits
along geographical lines, that, in his British
phase, Tucker worked within American-
type sculpture, whereas, on coming to
the new world, he reconnected with Euro-
pean tradition, in particular with a French
sculptural aesthetic that he had kept at a
certain theoretical distance. Tuckers land-
C
O
U
R
T
E
S
Y
M
C
K
E
E
G
A
L
L
E
R
Y
,
N
Y
Above: Odalisque, 2008. Plaster, 76 x 109 x 49 in.
Right: The Void, 2005. Bronze, 26.75 x 35 x 24 in.
sculpture
B
A
M S a
G E
F
sculpture
B
A
M S a
G E
F
mark book, The Language of Sculpture
(1974), based on a series of lectures deliv-
ered at Leeds University in 1969, argued
strenuously against romantic histrionics
in sculpture, stressing weightlessness and
play. This influential book offered revisionist
accounts of Rodin and Degas and, to Tuc-
kers later regret, was dismissive of Giaco-
metti. Tucker was resolutely streamlined
enough to be included by Kynaston McShine
in Primary Structures (1966), the land-
mark exhibition that heralded minimal art.
Even so, the uniform fiberglass cylinders
in his Four Part Sculpture series (1966),
which arguably represents Tucker at his
most reductive, retain elements of move-
ment that militate against Minimalism.
Movement would be a defining character-
istic in much of Tuckers open-form linear
sculpture of the later 1960s and early
1970s, in the voluptuously twisted (with a
tube bender) steel tubes of his Beulah
series (1971) and the elegantly skewed
steel-bar frames of his Porte series
(1973).
One way to reconcile the cerebral, opti-
cal, linear Tucker of the British period and
the hefty, earthy, neo-romantic humanist
he has become in America is to stress, in
place of look, feel, working method, or sub-
ject, the strenuousness of inquiry. It is as if
he needed to deal with the essence of the
medium exhaustively in order to then move
beyond the language of sculpture and give
shape to equally essential human experi-
ences. Tucker gave evidence that the same
man was at work in both continents and
paradigms in a statement that he made to
Norbert Lynton in 1977, saying that he
wanted to speak a human rather than an
art language.
It should be acknowledged that personal
crisis as well as changes in location and
ambition helped to move Tuckers work in a
radically new direction. In Canada, he wit-
nessed the demise of his first marriage and
a period of serious illness. His marriage to
the American expressionist painter Pamela
Avril, whom he met at Bennington College
in 1979, also had bearing on his develop-
ment. Additionally there was a crucial, tran-
sitional body of work, made between the
old world and the new, whose open forms
recall his linear abstraction but whose
robust finish and rough materials speak of a
new drama and earthiness. The House of
the Hanged Man (1981), a pitched struc-
ture in found wood, takes its sinister title
from a Czanne painting of 1873. The
brooding, existentialist titles of this period,
such as those derived from Kafka, The Priso-
ner and Portrait of K, resonated with his
desire to reconnect his work with social
experience rather than abstract phenomena.
Tuckers 1970s open forms are also
defined by his characteristic inclusion of
protruding (often intruding) spokes. Build-
ing a Wall in the Air, for instance, is made
up of joined bench forms of mild steel
whose legs dig into the negative space of
the sculptures interior. These forms,
in turn, would beget the individual furni-
ture-like objectsfigures almostin one
of Tuckers early series in bronze, the Guard-
ians (1983). The bronze forms initially
grew from his process of roughly applying
plaster to wooden structures to create an
animated surface. The limb-like extensions
in the Guardians became more forcibly
32 Sculpture 29.3
T
O
P
:
C
O
U
R
T
E
S
Y
N
E
W
A
R
T
C
E
N
T
R
E
,
R
O
C
H
E
C
O
U
R
T
,
S
A
L
I
S
B
U
R
Y
,
W
I
L
T
S
H
I
R
E
,
U
.
K
.
/
B
O
T
T
O
M
:
S
T
E
V
E
R
U
S
S
E
L
L
,
C
O
U
R
T
E
S
Y
P
A
N
G
O
L
I
N
,
L
O
N
D
O
N
Above: Four Part Sculpture 1, 1993. Painted fiber-
glass, 91.5 x 228.6 x 228.6 cm. Left: Greek Horse,
2003. Bronze, 56 x 42 x 24 in.
sculpture
B
A
M S a
G E
F
sculpture
B
A
M S a
G E
F
embodied in the Gymnasts of the follow-
ing year, a series inspired by watching the
Los Angeles Olympics on television, and, of
course, an homage to Degas.
Tuckers move to time-hallowed materials
and his reconnection with humanist subject
matter coincided with a 1980s resurgence
of figuration and expressionism. His dealer,
David McKee, wrote in a catalogue preface
in 1987 that in naming new sculptures after
gods and Titans, Tucker had self-evidently
rejected a Modernist interpretation and
moved closer to more classical concepts of
sculpture. The return to myth, besides con-
necting with the transavanguardia of other
transplanted Europeans, recalls the classi-
cism of an early rappel lordre like that
of Picasso, Cocteau, and Stravinsky in the
1920s. But there is nothing effete about
Tuckers bronzes since the 1980s. On the
contrary, they are brutal, blunt, hefty, and
primordial. Seeing an exhibition of his
bronzes from this period at the Ward Pound
Ridge Reservation, for instance, in Cross
River, New York, in 2007, the sensation was
far closer to chancing upon a circle of pre-
historic dolmen than a classical ruin. Tell-
ingly, Tucker was drawn in his titling to the
pre-Olympian pantheon of Thetys, Okeanos,
the Dactyls, Ouranos, and Gaia, more
archetypal deities than the Olympians who
followed them.
Tuckers bronzes meander in and out of
legibility. Some are lumpen masses that
defy efforts to pin them down, though their
general shape and the wealth of surface
ambiguity betoken bodiliness, even if
a given part cannot be named. Others, like
his extensive Horse series (198687) or
his Philosophers (1989), are relatively
specific in how they are to be read. But
even at their most elegiac, Tuckers sculp-
tures are unforgivingly difficult. They are
often almost oppressively big works; even
when he occasionally produces hand-sized
maquettes, the invested energy ensures a
sense of the monumental. They connect to
a fascination with Rodin that leaves behind
the polite formalism in Tuckers 1960s
analysis of the master to insist, instead,
on the primeval.
As much as the archetypal and heroic
romantic Rodin, it is the fragmentary
and ambiguous, deconstructive Rodin that
informs Tuckers sculpture. Andrew Forge
detected the key characteristic in late Tucker
when he demonstrated the ability of parts
to denote the whole. An ambiguous fragment
can appear as foot, fist, penis, or torso, slink-
ing from one reading to the other like Polo-
niuss cloud. More essentially, however, it
can also stand for the whole, empathetical-
ly imparting a bodily sense. As Tucker him-
self said in 1992: To project an inner sense
of the wholeness of the body has been the
task of sculpture from the makers of the
standing stones at Avebury in England and
the Venus of Willendorf to Degas and Rodin,
and it still can be in our time.
David Cohen is editor and publisher of
artcritical.com and gallery director of the
New York Studio School.
T
O
P
:
S
T
E
V
E
R
U
S
S
E
L
L
,
C
O
U
R
T
E
S
Y
P
A
N
G
O
L
I
N
,
L
O
N
D
O
N
/
B
O
T
T
O
M
:
C
O
U
R
T
E
S
Y
M
C
K
E
E
G
A
L
L
E
R
Y
,
N
Y
Right: Siren, 1994. Bronze, 150 cm. Below:
Tauromachy, 2008. Plaster, 62 x 99 x 55 in.
sculpture
B
A
M S a
G E
F
sculpture
B
A
M S a
G E
F
Leonardo
Drew
BY REBECCA DIMLING COCHRAN
Epic Mythologies
of Detritus
Number 80, 2004. Cast paper and miscellaneous
objects, 204 x 672 x 4 in.
sculpture
B
A
M S a
G E
F
sculpture
B
A
M S a
G E
F
sculpture
B
A
M S a
G E
F
sculpture
B
A
M S a
G E
F
You dont find art, art finds you, explains
Leonardo Drew, who began creating things
at an early age. At age 48, Drew is the sub-
ject of a traveling survey that presents 26
of his most significant sculptures and
drawings to date. Organized by Claudia
Schmuckli of the Blaffer Art Gallery in Hous-
ton (and on view through May 9 at the
Weatherspoon Art Museum in Greensboro,
North Carolina), the show illustrates the
development of an artist driven by a desire
to explore and challenge himself in unusual
and inventive ways. His personal vocabu-
lary, while well defined, never remains static,
and throughout his work reveals a meticu-
lous obsession with the craft of making art.
This personal style began in earnest during
Drews college years. Up until then, he had
been a child prodigy of sorts, recognized
for his skill from the age of 13. While
his four brothers were into athletics and
constantly roamed the Bridgeport, Connec-
ticut, streets, Drew preferred to stay in the
room that they all shared drawing and
painting in a style he likens to that of
Norman Rockwell. While in high school,
Drew saw Jackson Pollocks work, which he
says, Started showing up in my work. Even
with the kind of paintings I was doing,
there were all kinds of flourishes and it was
obvious that I was throwing paint and trying
to get this energy. Thats when I decided
there might be something else to this
making art. The idea only gained strength
when he traveled to New York in 1980 to
see a Picasso exhibition at MoMA.
Drew enrolled at the Parsons School of
Design in New York that fall, but it was two
years later, when he transferred to Cooper
Union, that a radical shift took place. He
removed everything familiar and began to
make black silhouette shapes out of cut
paper. I killed my sense of color, he
recalls. I also challenged the ability to
mimic or draw or show obvious facility.
Similarly, Drew eschewed any verbal signi-
fiers, changing his titles from words to a
chronological numerical system: As soon
as I made the decision to stop doing things
that were so obvious, it made sense
to strip away some of the other obvious
things like titles.
Having abandoned realistic depiction,
Drew became a meticulous creator of fic-
tion. He deftly manipulates a panoply of
very basic materials such as wood, canvas,
string, scrap metal, and bond paper to cre-
ate objects that appear to have a past or a
history. Steel plates are rusted by submerg-
ing them in tubs of water and exposing
them to the sun. Fabrics are torn and
stained in vats for months at a time to cre-
ate a patina of use. Even what appear as
simple scraps of wood are cut into ragged
shapes and given the illusion of worn paint
or rubbed-in dirt.
Occasionally, Drew has inserted found
objects into his sculptures, but they too
are subjected to his personal touch. His
first large-scale wall sculpture, Number 8
(1988), contains feathers and roadkill that
he taxidermied himself. Suspended by rope
from a board nailed to the wall, various
objects, including fractured planks of wood,
shreds of canvas, and cut paper stars, are
woven into a collage, the entire ensemble
washed with a layer of black to give a mono-
chromatic feel. The following year, Number
8 was exhibited in New York at the Kenke-
leba House and eagerly embraced by the
multi-cultural discourse, with critics reading
numerous cultural and historical references
into the work.
In 1990, Drew purchased some cotton
batting and pressed it into cubes that he
arranged across the floor in Number 17
(1991). The same material showed up in
Number 23 (1992), but here, the fluffed
fibers peeked out of rectangular drawers
constructed from canvas and nails. Then,
Drew says, there was an explosion of ones
that followed. Number 24, with the rust
and cotton stuck in there, looks like a cot-
ton field. This was followed by Number
25, a huge cotton wall. The material just
grabbed him: Art, for me, takes you by
36 Sculpture 29.3
F
R
A
N
K
S
T
E
W
A
R
T
,
C
O
U
R
T
E
S
Y
T
H
E
A
R
T
I
S
T
Number 8, 1988. Animal carcasses, animal hides,
feathers, paint, paper, rope, and wood, 108 x
120 x 4 in.
sculpture
B
A
M S a
G E
F
sculpture
B
A
M S a
G E
F
the nose and pulls you along. When the
series was exhibited, its formal abstraction
infused with African American symbolism
was a huge success. But Drew resisted the
commercial and critical pressure to contin-
ue in the same vein: I respect that body
of work, it happened through osmosis or
whatever. It was consistent in its use of a
material, but for me to continue to repeat
that was no longer necessary. It was time
to move on.
The next stage of his work involved a
type of rigorous geometric abstraction cen-
tered on the use of the grid. This structural
basis, he insists, was originally a matter of
convenience: You make something too big
to get out of your place, you make that mis-
take only once. He explains how he had to
break this thing down and then put it back
together. Thats where the grid comes from.
The grid format provides Drew with para-
meters through which he can explore many
other aspects of art-making: shape, texture,
volume, and tone. In Number 43 (1994),
for example, he assembled a massive wall
of hollow cubes, stacked one on top
of another. Reading like a series of cubby
holes, they are filled to various degrees
with different materials. Found objects, if
included, become unrecognizable in their
transformed state: All of the things are
pretty much things that you would have
recognized a long time ago, but the fact
that theyve been out in the weather,
theyve been beat down, they fit right
into my language. Their patina of age
matches the rest of the materials, which
were subjected to rust baths in the artists
studio so that from a distance they share
a luminous orange glow. Only close inspec-
tion reveals the subtle turquoise blue,
cherry red, silver gray, and bright whites
inherent in the original materials.
The grid structure also allows Drew to
explore the use of the void and how it can
turn the work into a physical experience
for the viewer. Filling it means you have
to take a step back, he explains. Not
having anything in there, they fall into it.
Right: Number 17, 1991. Cotton, canvas, and rust,
dimensions variable. Below: Number 23, 1992.
Cotton, canvas, nails, and wood, 96 x 120 x 8 in.
B
O
T
T
O
M
:
C
O
U
R
T
E
S
Y
B
R
E
N
D
A
T
A
Y
L
O
R
G
A
L
L
E
R
Y
,
N
Y
sculpture
B
A
M S a
G E
F
sculpture
B
A
M S a
G E
F
As viewers are drawn to look closely, Drew
hopes that the work functions as a kind of
mirror: It definitely triggers something
that we each recognize within ourselves.
So if these works are, in turn, bodies that
you can realize, then as a whole, you know
yourself when you look at them.
Another significant benefit of the grid
happens behind the closed doors of the
studio. Drew works on numerous projects
simultaneously and frequently moves sec-
tions from one piece to another. He has
even been known to cannibalize completed
works that have hung around too long.
Number 1 through Number 6, for example,
are now parts of Number 8, and many works
numbered in the late 30s now make up
Number 43: There have been times when
collectors have had the nerve to leave
things in the studio; thats not a good idea.
While Drew has always maintained a stu-
dio in Brooklyn, he is continuously absorbing
influences from other places. Jack Whitten,
a professor from Cooper Union, introduced
Drew to the island of Crete in the summer
of 1990, and he returned there for the next
eight years. After a residency at Art Pace in
San Antonio in 1995, Drew set up a second
studio above Finesilver Gallery, which he
maintained until 2006. He is a frequent
participant in residency programs
and has spent time in San Diego, Skow-
hegan, Maine, and Tokyo.
Often these visits provide Drew with the
luxury of time and materials to create new
works. Sometimes, they suggest entirely new
directions. Such was the case in Salvador,
Brazil, where Drew went in 1999 for two
months to work with kids as part of the
Projeto Ax, the Center for the Defense and
Protection of Children and Adolescents. He
engaged the children in a kind of scavenger
hunt, asking them to roam the streets and
collect worn and discarded objects. Their
findings were then stuffed into a fishing net
tacked to the wall, a group tapestry that
reflected the world around them. Struck
by the range of colors found among the
detritus, Drew returned to the U.S. and
made a series of works that re-introduced
recognizable found objects into his wall
sculptures. Instead of basing his selections
on cultural significance, he used shape and
color as criteria. Number 77 (2000), for
example, places objects randomly within
a grid structure. Their hues activate the
negative space in the flat planes of black.
At the same time, their three-dimensional
forms begin a conversation with the
other painted areas that jut from the
surface.
Drew furthered his explorations with
found objects during a residency at the
Fabric Workshop and Museum in Phila-
delphia, which culminated in an exhibi-
tion of radically new work (2002). Over a
38 Sculpture 29.3
Number 77, 2000. Found objects, paper, paint,
and wood, 168 x 672 x 58 in.
A
N
S
E
N
S
E
A
L
E
sculpture
B
A
M S a
G E
F
sculpture
B
A
M S a
G E
F
two-year period, he worked with FWM staff
to cast random formsan old bed frame,
a tricycle, a carousel horse, and a trom-
bonein white paper. Like his earlier sculp-
tures, these were monochromatic in feel,
but the light tonality marked a real shift
from his black and rust- colored works.
Where weight prevailed with the earlier
works, the objects scattered across the floor
in Number 80 appeared light. They pre-
sented a more ethereal view, as if suggest-
ing something rather than recording it.
Back in his studio, Drew perfected the
technique, achieving an even greater level
of translucence in subsequent freestanding
and wall-mounted cast paper sculptures.
While Numbers 89, 90, and 92 continued
to adhere to the grid format, Number 94
(2005) harks back to the suspended format
introduced in Number 8. In this work, made
entirely of cast paper, strings cascade from
a horizontal board hung high on the wall.
Objects that look as if they have come from
an abandoned attic are suspended at vari-
ous heights: an old-fashioned rotary phone,
a single baby shoe, a well-worn baseball
mitt, and a toy wagon. Interspersed among
random pieces of wood, the collection
resembles the remains of someones life
lost at sea, entangled in driftwood and
nets, then washed ashore and left to dry,
the entire assemblage bleached by the sun
and forever frozen in time.
In 2006, Drew decided to close his studio
in San Antonio. As he was cleaning, he
thought, You know something? I can see
the next piece here. And it is just made up
of parts of previous works. Exhibited first
in 2007 and reconfigured for the Houston
show, Number 123 consists of bits and
pieces that never made it into other works.
Installed over three walls, the floor-to-ceil-
ing arrangement performs a staccato sym-
phony in which individual bursts of shape
and color flow together into a harmonious
work: Its the most flexible, amorphous
piece that Ive ever created. I think that it
can always continue to grow and add to
itself and be just as viable because of the
intensity and diversity of the material.
Number 123 offers an interesting meta-
phor for Drews overall production. While
there is always a common thread to his
workthe color sensibility, the organiza-
tional characteristics, and the need to
manipulate materials with his own hands
he is always pushing and always exploring.
At the same time, he remains an active
part of the art historical conversation.
Parallels have been made to Eva Hesse and
Robert Smithson, Arte Povera artists, and
Anselm Kiefer. Drew is easily inserted into
the Post-Minimalist discourse and at the
same time shares a sensibility with contem-
porary artists like Radcliffe Bailey and El
Anatsui. His ability to converse with both
the past and the present while retaining his
own unique style testifies to his success at
drowning out the inevitable pressures of
commercial and critical voices and following
his own trajectory.
Rebecca Dimling Cochran is a writer living
in Atlanta.
T
O
P
:
D
O
R
O
T
H
Y
Z
E
I
D
M
A
N
,
C
O
U
R
T
E
S
Y
T
H
E
A
R
T
I
S
T
/
B
O
T
T
O
M
:
D
.
J
A
M
E
S
D
E
E
Number 43, 1994. Fabric, plastic, rust, string, and
wood, 138 x 288 x 12 in.
Number 114T, 2007. Graphite, paint, and wood
on paper, 23 x 23 in.
sculpture
B
A
M S a
G E
F
sculpture
B
A
M S a
G E
F
sculpture
B
A
M S a
G E
F
sculpture
B
A
M S a
G E
F
A light bulb, a bag of air, a bucket, colored
markersthese are some of the common-
place items that Ceal Floyer makes us
rethink as we contemplate her under-
stated, multimedia installations. Curiously
expansive and lingering in their effect,
these conceptual, perceptual time-release
capsules are far more ponderous to
describe verbally than to get visually;
they inspire description and analysis, but
nonetheless elude them. Often designated
a Minimalist conceptualist, Floyer studied
at Goldsmiths in London, graduating in
1994, and now lives and works in Berlin.
She emerged as an international art world
presence in the mid-1990s and has received
several awards, including Berlins presti-
gious Preis der Nationalgalerie fr Junge
Kunst in 2007. In the past year or so, Floyer
has been extraordinarily active, with solo
exhibitions at the Palais de Tokyo in Paris,
the Museo dArte Contemporanea Donna
Regina in Naples, Centre dArt Santa Monica,
Barcelona, the Swiss Institute in New York,
303 Gallery, and currently at the Museum
of Contemporary Art in Miami. In between,
she has participated in numerous group
shows at institutions around the world, in
Basel, Amsterdam, Copenhagen, Aspen,
and Minneapolis, as well as at the Turin
Triennial and last years Venice Biennale.
Floyer is known for her precise, elegantly
succinct projections and installations leav-
ened by a certain nuanced humor, works
that evoke a slow smile, not a belly laugh.
Rejecting spectacle, she is more interested
in exploring perceptual/psychological inter-
actions of viewer, artwork, and space
with their attendant ambiguities. Her work,
which frequently depends on a technologi-
cally based medium incorporating sound
and/or light, amalgamates the linguistic,
Opposite: Overgrowth, 2004. AV-stand
and large-format slide projection,
installation view. This page: Untitled,
2008. Metal suggestion box and sign,
11.75 x 12.25 x 6 in. C
O
U
R
T
E
S
Y
3
0
3
G
A
L
L
E
R
Y
,
N
Y
Ceal Floyers Special
BY LILLY WEI
sculpture
B
A
M S a
G E
F
sculpture
B
A
M S a
G E
F
Double Act (2006), another double
entendre, conjures a theater spotlight
shining on a red curtain. It consists of a
slide projection of a circular red curtain
onto the wall and floor, so that it looks
like a curtain and a spot, a simple physics
gambit that forces light onto two planes
to create the split that turns the projec-
tion into both curtain and spotlight, a
double image. It raises the question of
the fictive and fictive space once again,
of something ultimately independent
from the real, even if contiguous or super-
imposed.
quent Floyer trope. It is indeed a light
switch, substituting a simulation for the
real device in a wholly transparent exchange.
In Floyers work, the failure of the illusion
is the pointand the pleasureas she
invites you to hopscotch between the liter-
al, the (somewhat) illusionistic, and the
slightly absurd. Overhead Projection (2006)
is another iteration of lighting, of doubled
and dismantled artifice. A clear glass bulb
is projected high (overhead) onto a wall,
etched in shimmering detail; it seems, for a
moment, to be the source of the rooms
illumination, but only for a moment. Its a
notion quickly dispelled by Floyers insis-
tence on full disclosure, a this-is/this-is-
not-a-light-bulb moment.
the literal, the theatrical, and the liminal.
What makes it distinctive is her fine regard
for details: while we see the image, the
means of conveying that image, and its
consequent dismantling, the effect seems
separateand baffling. What we see is
what we see in Floyers production, yet
it is also more than what we see.
Floyer has been preoccupied with devices
that provide illumination since she was a
student. In the early Light Switch (1992), a
35-mm slide of the title object is projected
onto the wall of a darkened room, mimicking
an actual switch. The projector is visible,
the picture luminous and convincing, and
the title factual, with a twist since switch
is employed as both verb and nouna fre-
Double Act, 2006. Light projection, photographic
gobo, and theater lamp, installation view.
C
O
U
R
T
E
S
Y
T
H
E
A
R
T
I
S
T
A
N
D
L
I
S
S
O
N
G
A
L
L
E
R
Y
,
L
O
N
D
O
N
42 Sculpture 29.3
sculpture
B
A
M S a
G E
F
sculpture
B
A
M S a
G E
F
dazzler Apollinaris (2005), presents a wall-
sized projection of a black screen streaked
by intermittent bursts of pinpointed light
that suggest shooting stars. However, as
the viewer soon realizes, they are sparkling
bubbles of, yes, Apollinaris water.
Floyers text-based work includes Genuine
Reduction (2005), which consists of
the kind of sign put into shop windows to
advertise a sale. By simply removing the
s at the end of Reductions, she makes
it a genuine reductionor redaction.
Reversed (2005) is a color photograph
of a black and white restaurant reserved
sign. Floyer presents the word so that
it reads back to front. It takes a moment,
but then you get it: reserved, reversed,
which is also a commentary on photo-
graphic technique and reliability. The
amusing, if somewhat disquieting Drain
(2005) is a perfect hybrid of the visual
and the aural. A small round black speaker,
with its leads snaking to an amp some dis-
tance away, is positioned on the floor. At
intervals, the sound of water being sucked
Floyer has also performed, as she did in
Birmingham in 2001 at Symphony Hall in
front of a classical music audience awaiting
a concert. A Nail Biting Performance was,
in Floyer fashion, true to its title, an act
of nervousness idiosyncratically reconsid-
ered. Floyer walked to the podium, the
orchestras empty chairs behind her, exam-
ined her hands slowly, then, the sound
amplified by a microphone, began to bite
her nails for approximately five minutes
in a parody of stage fright that also regis-
tered as actual stage fright. From very lit-
tle, Floyer can find more than expected.
She also uses video. Downpour (2000) is
a close-up of rain. In order to keep the rain
straight, the background swivels constantly,
a stringently self-referential system that
disregards the realities of the world as
it adheres to its own defined parameters.
Floyer said that, in Downpour, the cropped
framing and tilting of the image (in order
to achieve the vertical lines of rainfall) is
the decisive factorthats why the work
was made. Another video, the Minimalist
Above: Taking a Line for a Walk, 2008. Lawn-marking paint, installation view. Right: Wish you were
here, 2008. Postcard holder, 69 x 16.25 in.
T
O
P
:
C
O
U
R
T
E
S
Y
T
H
E
A
R
T
I
S
T
A
N
D
L
I
S
S
O
N
G
A
L
L
E
R
Y
,
L
O
N
D
O
N
/
B
O
T
T
O
M
:
C
O
U
R
T
E
S
Y
3
0
3
G
A
L
L
E
R
Y
,
N
Y
sculpture
B
A
M S a
G E
F
sculpture
B
A
M S a
G E
F
as both noun and verb. Resembling a
grand staircase, each speaker emits the
sound of footstepsa clop purchased
from a sound archivethat scales the
wall, going up and down like a musical
sequence, a further musing on the nature
of language, thought, and time.
For The Quick and the Dead, a group
show of international artists at the Walker
Art Center, Floyer contributed Suspense,
another psychologized project. Installed in
an empty room with a speaker and a sen-
sor, the sound replicates the thrum that
underscores increasing tension in a movie
scene, ending in (spoiler alert) a cre-
scendo. The sequence is triggered by the
entrance of the viewer, cast as audience,
witness, and performer, the empty space
destabilized and dramatized by the intru-
sion. Suspense most commonly denotes
a state of uncertaintyanother Floyer
erasablethey become another terse
meditation on ephemerality, acquiring
an equivocal profundity.
A new series of pen and ink drawings
on paper is called, unsurprisingly, Ink on
Paper, the number of drawings deter-
mined by the number of felt-tip pens in
the package purchasedin this instance,
30. The colors also depend on the package
of archival Italian markers. The tip of each
pen is held upright on the paper and
allowed to drain until the pen is emptied,
a slow process, leaving a circle of slightly
modulated, translucent color. The series
suggests a color chart as well as an image
of duration, a marking of time as a kind
of calendar or a reductive, latter-day book
of hours.
Scale (2007) was the showstopper, a
site-specific installation of sleek black
speakers ascending the gallerys 16-foot
back wall, each one mounted to the wall
as if it were a tread. Scale also doubles
down a sink gurgles from the speaker
which resembles a drain, now that Floyer
mentions itanother instance of her wry,
nothing-up-her-sleeve kind of transforma-
tion.
The three works featured in Floyers
recent show at 303 Gallery in New Yorks
Chelsea continue to mine the themes of
time and change, which, with love and
death, encompass all other subjects. In
one piece, a double-sided blackboard rests
on the floor, a smaller version of the
menu signage placed outside restaurants.
Todays Special is neatly chalked in
caps, but the space below is blank, and
Floyer has dropped the final s
again. The other side bears the statement
Tomorrow is another day. Todays
Special, spurred by the obverse state-
ment, might also mean today is special,
the pivotal apostrophe relinquishing its
possessiveness and standing in for the i.
Although truismsmodestly presented,
44 Sculpture 29.3
Reversed, 2005. C-print on aluminum, 70 x 100 cm.
C
O
U
R
T
E
S
Y
T
H
E
A
R
T
I
S
T
A
N
D
L
I
S
S
O
N
G
A
L
L
E
R
Y
,
L
O
N
D
O
N
sculpture
B
A
M S a
G E
F
sculpture
B
A
M S a
G E
F
saying nothing outside of itself. I still
think the more defined or simple some-
thing might be in terms of content, the
more space it opens up for thought and
imagination. On the other hand, we
could simply revel in Floyers economy of
means, her oblique, literal poetry with its
ambient intimations, its modest, barely
there beauty. Either way, shes one of
todays specials.
Lilly Wei is a writer living in New York.
sized tree, the heads of viewers just skim-
ming the lowest branches when they
passed in front of it. The title is, as usual,
literal, although again, as a giant nature
morte or inflated image weighted with
multiple meanings, it perhaps includes
a critique of overgrown biennials. From
there, it leads into other ideological and
perceptual territory; it is both a tree and
not a tree. Floyer once said that theres a
fine line between something making poetic
sense of itself and becoming a short circuit,
specialtybut it can also mean an act,
a temporary cessation, a suspension.
Overgrowth (2004), which was featured
in last years Venice Biennale, filled a
huge wall at one end of the Arsenale. It
was a quietly beautiful, softly glowing
projection of a bonsai photo, blown up
until it was the size of an immense, full-
Todays Special, 2009. 2-sided sign, 81.3 x 54.9 x
56.5 cm. View with Scale, 2007. 24 wall-mounted
speakers, computer, and 12 stereo amplifiers.
C
O
U
R
T
E
S
Y
3
0
3
G
A
L
L
E
R
Y
,
N
Y
sculpture
B
A
M S a
G E
F
sculpture
B
A
M S a
G E
F
Nothing Outlives Mortality
Februarys Sedan, 2001. Unfired clay, wood, wire, and
cement, installation view.
sculpture
B
A
M S a
G E
F
sculpture
B
A
M S a
G E
F
A Conversation with
BY MICHAL AMY
C
O
U
R
T
E
S
Y
T
H
E
A
R
T
I
S
T
sculpture
B
A
M S a
G E
F
sculpture
B
A
M S a
G E
F
Kristen Morgin makes shells of things. She embraces breakdown and
wear and tear, traces of which constitute evidence of past longings and
actions. Her subject is manmade objects produced in a distant or not-
so-distant past: cellos of unspecified date, a piano that belonged to
Ludwig van Beethoven, carousel horses with whiffs of the Belle poque,
pedal cars of the 20s or 30s, Cadillacs and Mercurys that rolled off the
assembly line more than half a century ago, heavily thumbed pulp novels
and comic books. Made of terra crudaunfired clayand supported by
armatures of wood and wire, her sculptures evoke fragmentary objects
retrieved from the trash heap of history and painstakingly, if only par-
tially, reconstructed, thereby inviting us to fill in the gaps. These ruins,
veering from high to low, from the pedimental groups on the Parthenon
evoked by the horsesto the modern-day junkyardevoked by the
seemingly rusted-through carsare extremely fragile, teetering on the
edge of imminent collapse. Time passes. Everything is in a state of flux,
and everything will inevitably be reduced to dust.
Michal Amy: Tell me about your series of
life-sized, brittle-looking clay cellos.
Kristen Morgin: I made a series of nine cel-
los for an exhibition in 2001. The show
was quite extensive. It included 60 sculp-
tures of various sizes and 150 small paper
collages compiled into a homemade book.
When I produced the cellos, I was inter-
ested in making musical instruments that
looked how I thought they sounded. I was
interested in creating varied surfaces and
treated each piece differently. In some
cases, I built up the surface by layering
materialsglue, clay, dust, paint, and
stain. Sometimes, I subtracted material to
leave a minimal skeletal form behind. In
another case, I drenched the surface in
paint and stain and hit it with a torch. The
result was a charred and sometimes blis-
tered surface. I want my things to be deli-
cate. I want my things to be flawed, tenu-
ous, and precarious. I want them to exist
with these obvious shortcomings.
A grand piano from 2004, made of
unfired clay, matches the size and shape of
a piano once owned by Beethoven. His
piano still exists and is in far better shape
than the piano that I made. I had read
a description of his piano and wanted to
make my own version. I built a wooden
structure and then glued clay to it. Glue,
cement, and salt were mixed into the clay.
At the time, I was experimenting with salt
as a way to create variations in the color
and texture. When water evaporates out of
the clay, the salt leaves a deposit on the
surface of the sculpture. I was interested in
both the aesthetic and conceptual results
achieved through the use of salt, which
is the second-most corrosive material on
earth. It was once a very precious and
sought-after material. Wars were fought
over it. It was a symbol of upper-class
luxury. All of this seemed appropriate to
tie into my version of Beethovens piano.
I wanted to couple the piano with a
small but life-sized car based on a Fiat 500.
I chose the Topolinoor Little Mouse,
as the 500 is calledbecause it has a
small-but-mighty reputation. This vehicle
can go anywhere. You see it crammed full
48 Sculpture 29.3
Stingray, 2006. Unfired clay, wood, wire, salt,
and talc, approximately 52 x 60 x 18 in.
R
O
B
E
R
T
W
E
D
E
M
E
Y
E
R
,
C
O
U
R
T
E
S
Y
M
A
R
C
S
E
L
W
Y
N
F
I
N
E
A
R
T
,
L
O
S
A
N
G
E
L
E
S
sculpture
B
A
M S a
G E
F
sculpture
B
A
M S a
G E
F
of people or with precariously balanced
furniture strapped to the roof. It runs on
about a teaspoon worth of gasoline. Two
people can pick it up. It is a sturdy little
car, yet it has a reputation as a low-class
vehicle with little more status than a well-
made bicycle. I put a great deal of empha-
sis on the interior of the car and its small-
est details. So, I coupled the piano with
the Topolino, which seemed a little awk-
ward and random. But later, I grew to
appreciate the diminished grandness of
the piano set alongside the Topolino.
MA: Why are your objects shown in states
of disintegration?
KM: I make things that I want to see. I like
the way these things look. Im not really
attracted to the shininess of new things.
I like objects that look like they have been
around the block a few times. I like things
that have a history. I like the way things
look when they have been repaired.
I have often chosen to make specific
things in order to comprehend and get
closer to cultures that I do not understand.
To be more specific, the best way for me
to get closer to classical music was to build
musical instruments. The best way for me
to get closer to Beethoven was to re-make
his piano. The best way for me to under-
stand car culture and low riders was to
make some cars of my own. I think that
what I am trying to do is different than
romanticizing the past. I have never felt
particularly nostalgic about cars. However,
I know a lot of people who immediately
go back in timeto a supposedly better
timewhen they see the fins of a
59 Cadillac. What I am trying to do is to
reclaim someone elses nostalgia for myself
by creating my own history with objects
that cause other people to feel nostalgic.
MA: Do you use actual cars as models, or
do you use photographs or drawings to
guide you as you build your sculptures?
KM: I build objects any way I can. I eye-ball
most everything. I follow my own instincts
and trust that if problems arise I will either
learn from them or find a way to make my
accidents happy. I follow my own round-
the-back-way logic when I make things,
but this isnt always the best way. I dont
always choose the easiest solutions to
problems. My objects are a result of both
my skills and my faults. I like that my shortcomings are apparent in the objects that I
make. There are often precisely crafted parts next to parts that are put together with duct
tape and thread, that rely more on luck and balance to stay in place than on anchors
and adhesives. I often get asked how I make things. People are usually disappointed
with the I-use-my-intuition answerworking without plans, diagrams, preliminary
drawings, photographs, or molds seems far too daring. The truth is that I do not have the
patience to make plans before I make things. I find the making of molds to be too time-
consuming; additionally, molds give results that are far too predictable and boring for
my taste. I would rather just get to work and find out how I can arrive at what I am
after. I invent ways of working as I go along. I occasionally use actual things as models.
When I made cars, I visited car shows and looked at pictures in books. When I was
working on the cellos, I found that it was more helpful to listen to music than to look at
instruments. In my most recent works, I try to re-create old paperback books. I am trying
T
O
P
:
R
O
B
E
R
T
W
E
D
E
M
E
Y
E
R
,
C
O
U
R
T
E
S
Y
M
A
R
C
S
E
L
W
Y
N
F
I
N
E
A
R
T
,
L
O
S
A
N
G
E
L
E
S
/
B
O
T
T
O
M
:
C
O
U
R
T
E
S
Y
T
H
E
A
R
T
I
S
T
Above: Monopoly, 2007. Unfired clay, paint, and ink, 38.5 x 37 x 1.5 in. Below: Installation view with
Piano Forte, 2004, unfired clay, wood, wire, and salt, 72.5 x 46 x 97 in.; and Topolino, 2003, unfired
clay, wood, and wire, 51 x 48 x 102 in.
sculpture
B
A
M S a
G E
F
sculpture
B
A
M S a
G E
F
to create human as opposed to mechanical copies of specific books that I own or covet.
Lately, it has been helpful to have the actual book that I am trying to re-create.
MA: Which sculptors do you admire?
KM: I like Ed Kienholz and Tim Hawkinson. But to be quite honest, the inspiration for my
work comes not from sculpture but from sources that may have nothing to do with art.
MA: Your work implies narrative. Are we supposed to imagine a story that would explain
the forlorn state of the two life-sized clay cars you keep in your garage, that look as if they
had been retrieved from the water, or set afire, following a murder or heist?
KM: A lot of people like to imagine these kinds of narratives when they see my work,
but I dont. I think that the objects are what they are. There is plenty there to investigate
and discover without having to invent stories.
MA: Tell me more about the cars.
KM: To date, I have made four life-sized carsnot including a childs pedal-car that I made
in 2006. Car culture is extremely important in L.A.thats why cars appear in my work.
The first car I made was a Cadillac, back in 2001. I was interested in its majestic quality.
Nine people can sit in a Cadillac. It has a miraculous, unbelievable quality. A Cadillac
was a real status symbol; now, its the exact opposite. I wanted to make the Cadillac
appear as if it were disintegrating. It was, in fact, disintegrating quite a bit because
at the time I knew very little about building large-scale sculpture. The second car I built
was the Topolino in 2003. In 2004, I built my second Cadillac, which was based on a
1959 hearse. I wanted to make a hearse
for two reasons. First, I was going to be
in a show featuring artists working ambi-
tiously with ceramicsand a 59 Cadillac
hearse is a big damn car. Second, people
often tell me how much my work has to
do with death. I dont see it that way. I
feel that my work has more to do with
surviving. Nevertheless, I wanted to see
what would happen if I made a piece
specifically about death. The hearse is in
my garage. Next to it is a low rider that I
made for the Thing show at the Hammer
Museum, based on a 4951 Mercury,
which I chose for several reasons. This was
my first big L.A. show, and I wanted a car
that was somehow particularly attached to
L.A. One of my favorite old L.A. movies is
Rebel Without a Cause. James Dean drove
a 49 Mercury in that movie. In low rider
culture, the 4951 Mercury, is a bad-ass
car, the quintessential low rider. Eighty per-
cent of the cars that have flames painted
on them are Mercurys. I really wanted to
make a car with flames on it.
MA: The hearse seems to reinforce my
somber interpretation of your work.
KM: My work has less to do with death
than with surviving. The things I make
should not have survived this long, but
they have. My work is about outliving. Its
about fabricated time. Its about some-
body elses memorymy parents, per-
hapsbut not mine.
What I like most about my work is that
it is so fragile. Its precarious in its exis-
tence, and it needs a lot of maintenance.
Thats why I use unfired clay. The work
comes with the shortcomings of mortality.
Fragility says something about mortality.
Its lousy that things break down. It would
change a lot of things if things were made
to last forever. It would change how peo-
ple lead their lives. Neither my sculptures
nor the objects they are based on will last
forever. I like the double negative.
MA: Do you occasionally recycle a disinte-
grating work and incorporate it into a new
construction?
KM: No, and I dont expect that I would.
I make everything from scratch.
MA: What are you currently making?
KM: I am re-creating my possessions now:
books, comic books, and little toys. I began
50 Sculpture 29.3
R
O
B
E
R
T
W
E
D
E
M
E
Y
E
R
,
C
O
U
R
T
E
S
Y
M
A
R
C
S
E
L
W
Y
N
F
I
N
E
A
R
T
,
L
O
S
A
N
G
E
L
E
S
Mighty Mouse and Popeye, 2006. Unfired clay, wood, wire, and paint, installation view.
sculpture
B
A
M S a
G E
F
sculpture
B
A
M S a
G E
F
making this work about two years ago.
Initially, I just wanted to spend more time
with the things I liked. So I made them.
These pieces are kind of like homages to the
original objects, but they also fail. They are
like anti-monuments because the pieces are
very delicate, made with unfired clay and
paint, and they will not last. The drawings sometimes fade. Both the original and my fab-
ricated counterparts will fail. I am also trying to make art for everyone I have ever
known. I like the idea of the gift. I am in close proximity to people on a daily basis
but dont have solid interactions with them. So, while I make gifts for these people,
I find a moment to think of them. It makes me feel better about making things.
Michal Amy is an art historian and a frequent contributor to Sculpture.
T
O
P
:
R
O
B
E
R
T
W
E
D
E
M
E
Y
E
R
,
C
O
U
R
T
E
S
Y
M
A
R
C
S
E
L
W
Y
N
F
I
N
E
A
R
T
,
L
O
S
A
N
G
E
L
E
S
/
B
O
T
T
O
M
:
C
O
U
R
T
E
S
Y
T
H
E
A
R
T
I
S
T
Top: Installation view of objects for everyone I have known, 2008. Left detail: Bunny Cups, 2006. Unfired clay, paint, ink, marker, and ceramic cup, 4.5 x
8.5 x 4 in. Right detail: Bodies in Bedlam, 2008. Unfired clay, paint, ink, marker, and paperback, 7 x 8 x .5 in.
sculpture
B
A
M S a
G E
F
sculpture
B
A
M S a
G E
F
sculpture
B
A
M S a
G E
F
sculpture
B
A
M S a
G E
F
Icelandic artist Katrn Sigurdardttir uses
scale to explore notions of land, space,
and memory as well as the bodys place in
a world that seems to be shrinking. Her
popular High Plane V installation at P.S.1
Contemporary Art Center (2006) allowed
two viewers at a time to climb tall ladders
and insert their heads into an imaginary
glacial vista. Each head appeared gigantic
in relation to the miniature icescape. The
Haul series features 20 small shipping
boxes that open and unfold to offer portable,
generic landscapes.
The works in Sigurdardttirs two recent
exhibitionsdystopic stacked and shelved
landscapes and stacked miniature cities
at the Greenberg Van Doren Gallery and a
miniature guard tower imprisoned in its
own cube at Eleven Rivington Gallery
use scale as well as interior and exterior
space to study the receding geosphere,
dilemmas involving space, and how
we humans may be losing touch with
ourselves.
Jan Garden Castro: What was the origin of your recent series of works?
Katrn Sigurdardttir: In 2007, when I was preparing for an exhibition called
Megastructure (2008), I revisited subjects that had interested me in the late
1990s. I was introduced to the work of Archigram in the early 90s with their
seminal exhibition at ThreadWaxing Space in New York; ever since, I have been
fascinated by speculative architecture and engineering, futuristic and psyche-
delic solutions to urban problems. A megastructure is a mega-building or built
network that serves as a platform or framework for buildings of more conven-
tional scale and utility. I built an eight-foot-tall model of such a structure, a
building with six artificial landscape-levels. It was a direct spin-off from the
designs of the Hungarian-French architect Yona Friedman. In many ways, this
was a singular piece for me, because as a sculpture, it behaves more like
an architectural model than almost any other work that I have shown in the
past 10 years. It doesnt have the typical doublesided-ness of my other minia-
Opposite: Megastructure, 2008. Resin, steel, Styrofoam, foil,
and pigments, 91 x 81 x 35 in. This page: Haul IXX, 2009. Wood,
resin, and pigments, 11 x 27 x 10.5 in. C
O
U
R
T
E
S
Y
E
L
E
V
E
N
R
I
V
I
N
G
T
O
N
,
N
Y
,
A
N
D
G
R
E
E
N
B
E
R
G
V
A
N
D
O
R
E
N
G
A
L
L
E
R
Y
,
N
Y
Katrn Sigurdardttir
BY JAN GARDEN CASTRO
A Conversation with
The Scale of PERCEPTION
sculpture
B
A
M S a
G E
F
sculpture
B
A
M S a
G E
F
tures, which draw attention to how the work is perceived and create an ambiguous percep-
tive territory between the work as a sculptural object and as a model, thereby complicating
the viewers relationship to it. But it is akin to numerous other works in that it doesnt pro-
pose a structure or a space so much as it posthumously describes it. It appears more like
a dystopic ruin, a memorial to modernistic prospects, and in that, points both to the future
and the pastthe future that became the past before it ever came to be buildable.
The show at Greenberg Van Doren took this work as a departure point. Although all of
the works in the show were new, completed in 2008 and 09, there was a retrospective
intent in their making, i.e., looking back to my work of the last 10 years and processing
it. The show consisted of four objects that attempt to articulate a lineage from works
such as the Haul series to Megastructure.
This lineage goes from the mega-shelves of a utopian urban plan to a landscape, seg-
mented, contained in a cabinet, and hence related to furniture or antiquated museum
display cases, to a place envisioned and packed in a box. In a tangent off this line, the
small stacked cityscape on a no-tricks white pedestal references Friedman and his
elaboration on vertical expansions in urban space. It is also a reference to the vertical
layering of old cities, with new towns built literally on the ruins of the old, as revealed
through archaeological excavations. All of the works in the show are boxes: the mega-
structure as the box around the city, the cabinet as a box around land as an ownable
entity, the crate that contains the mountain as an artifact, and the white pedestal as
the classic gallery furniture that white-balances and serves as a social reference point.
All of the works also show a kind of impossible layering of terrains, one on top of the
other, layering by design, layering by time, layering through objectification.
JGC: What is the origin of the stacked and shelved mountains?
KS: In 2002, I visited the Egyptian Museum in Turin, a beautiful museum not only for its
holdings but also for its antiquated displays. That same year, I placed landscapes in vit-
rines, similar to those I had seen in the museum. The stacked landscape has a reference
to this work. It consists of heavily segmented terrain that when installed together looks
much like a game board, but it divides into 24 panels, which then divide further into three
units that resemble the inner structure from a chest of drawers or a cabinet. Each cabi-
net is an individual work. Like Odd Lots (2005) and Haul 2005 (2005), this work comments
on segmentation, ownership, and conquest, both of land and of art.
JGC: You didnt use much color.
KS: Its not entirely monochrome; Im just
not using the exaggerated colors that I
used in my past landscapes and that are
commonly used in miniatures. The color
range is truer to that of real landscapes,
although I should make the point that none
of these landscapes has a definite refer-
ence point anywhere on the planet. Its
a common misconception that my work
depicts Iceland, especially among those
who have not been there. When I make
the landscapes, Im thinking just as much
about California and Switzerland, and
yet its not specifically those places either.
The Icelandic landscape has an almost
mythical status in peoples minds, and the
surge of tourism, the branding and mar-
keting of the country in the last decades,
has only inflated these visions. I play with
exactly this trick. My interest is always
less in place itself than in the way that
place is perceived, imagined, remembered,
described, mapped, essentially obscured
and invented.
JGC: The show at Eleven Rivington in New
York featured a guard tower imprisoned
in a white cube.
54 Sculpture 29.3
C
O
U
R
T
E
S
Y
E
L
E
V
E
N
R
I
V
I
N
G
T
O
N
,
N
Y
,
A
N
D
G
R
E
E
N
B
E
R
G
V
A
N
D
O
R
E
N
G
A
L
L
E
R
Y
,
N
Y
The Green Grass of Home, 1998. Plywood, hobby-
modeling materials, canvas, and hardware,
installation view.
sculpture
B
A
M S a
G E
F
sculpture
B
A
M S a
G E
F
KS: That show was a more distilled, abstracted statement. One large installation filled
the entire gallery. The work is an outside-in white cube, so an inversion of the gallery
space or a doubling of the space in a slightly shrunken scale, depending on how you see
it. The two elements in this cube, twin objects, one in full scale and the other in miniature,
are modeled on the small stations of royal guards. These single-body chambers are usually
placed by a palace entrance, and these two are based on the guard stations outside
the Royal Palace in Copenhagen. It is interesting that these stations are not fixed to the
ground; instead, they have floors and legs similar to those of a large wardrobe, so they
are somewhere between architecture and furniture. They are part of a faade and, of par-
ticular interest to me, a structure for single-body surveillance and control.
The relationship between the viewer and the work is always important to me, and most
of my work with scale only becomes activated by the viewers presencethe uncomfortable
confrontation between the perceptive scale of the miniature and the scale of the body and
the architecture that contains it. As in High Plane, this installation is a device for perception,
a dual perception, a controlled view of that which is on the other side of the white
cube, something in a surreal scale in proportion to the viewer. But here, the body is always
invisible, erased behind the mirror, which both blocks and expands the view. In this work,
I am trying to take on the limits between in and out, interior and exterior, inclusion and
exclusion, visibility and projection. The guarded palace is obscurely related to the exhibition
space, the gallery, the museum. The life being guarded, that of the artist, is invisible, yet
it is present in the empty space surrounding the work, within the actual gallery walls.
JGC: Does the work address current problems in Iceland and the rest of the world?
KS: My process as an artist does not directly address current events in Iceland. It would
simply be opportunistic. I talk a lot about whats happening, and that is the most suit-
able medium. Social issues, issues of identity, power, and nationality, are very much at
the foundation of my work however obscure they may be. There are many narrative pos-
sibilities. For instance, people have read my work in an eco-political contexta reading
pertaining to global capitalism and the exploitation of natural resources seems warranted.
However, no one reading is more correct or appropriate than any other. Its all what
the viewer brings to the work.
Jan Garden Castro is a Contributing Editor for Sculpture living in New York.
Above: Untitled, 2009. Resin, 8 x 15 x 9.75 in.
Below: Untitled, 2009. Mixed media, 111 x
114.25 x 114.25 in.
C
O
U
R
T
E
S
Y
E
L
E
V
E
N
R
I
V
I
N
G
T
O
N
,
N
Y
,
A
N
D
G
R
E
E
N
B
E
R
G
V
A
N
D
O
R
E
N
G
A
L
L
E
R
Y
,
N
Y
sculpture
B
A
M S a
G E
F
sculpture
B
A
M S a
G E
F
London-based Tariq Alvi is quick to admit his penchant for pop culture. He recycles riotous
effigies from advertisements, pornography, and consumer magazines in his installations,
often reconfiguring them into collages. Through his paper-based art, Alvi meticulously digests
generic and overlooked icons of our disposable culture, visually calling for a re-appraisal
of material worth. He has also mastered trompe loeil with cut-out paper, which he cunningly
manipulates in homage to consumerism, civic conflict, and the elusive dual nature of desire
and reward. His delicate dissections and re-assemblies exalt the ambiguities of politics, social
belonging, and the authenticity of personal possession, leaving the viewer to decide questions
of value.
Alvi has exhibited from Shanghai to London to New York City and in San Francisco at 2nd
Floor Projects in 2008. In 2006, he was represented at the Frieze Art Fair by both Cabinet,
London, and Diana Stigter Gallery, Amsterdam. Earlier in the decade, he exhibited back-to-
back solos at the Gate Foundation in Amsterdam (2000) and Whitechapel Art Gallery in
London (2001). Last year, his work was shown in solo exhibitions at Chisenhale Gallery in
London and the Badischer Kunstverein in Karlsruhe.
Joli Reichel: How long have you focused on paper-based installations, and what keeps you
interested in this medium?
Tariq Alvi: I started, more or less, in 1990. I like the idea that paper is all around us. For
example, we get things through the post, flyers and circulars, which are eventually discarded.
But paper can be re-used, recontextualized, and have its life and meaning extended and
pushed further. In the early 90s, I started working on various techniques of cutting, tearing,
pulping, and pinning paper. I wanted to give it a second life and transform it beyond being
passively consumed or received.
JR: Your work approaches themes of consumerism
and materialism. How does your choice of paper
as a medium connect to this?
TA: Paper is used by commerceits used to sell
56 Sculpture 29.3
Above: The Meaning, 2009. Mixed media,
installation view. Left: Dyslexic Dancer,
2009. Mirror, glass, and collaged magazine
cuttings, 102 x 119.5 x 295 cm. A
N
D
Y
K
E
A
T
E
,
C
O
U
R
T
E
S
Y
C
H
I
S
E
N
H
A
L
E
G
A
L
L
E
R
Y
,
L
O
N
D
O
N
T A
BY JOLI REICHEL
Loose Ends
A Conversation with
sculpture
B
A
M S a
G E
F
sculpture
B
A
M S a
G E
F
things. In the HELP installation (2002), I wanted to
tear commercial flyers into pieces, cut them up, and
reconfigure them back into their own aesthetic ori-
gins. Commerce uses colors, shapes, patterns, text,
and typography to sell things, and I wondered what
would happen if you reversed the entire process. HELP
takes everyday material used for a certain purpose and,
by an act of both destruction and construction, re-
arranges it to address classical questions of form,
shape, color, light, and pattern.
JR: Your two-dimensional work frequently employs
trompe loeil. Could you explain your reason for using
this effect in Jewellery Board (2000)?
TA: Here, I see myself as confusing value. Youre looking
at an image of jewelry. Even when youre in the space
and can clearly see that its paper, your mind still sees
it as something more. The work gives a strange effect,
in that you desire this thing. Theres a play between
our desire for what were looking at and whats actually
there. Even when we see that it is not what we think
it is, we cant divorce our feelings from it.
JR: What challenges do your recent installations pre-
sent in terms of set-up and maintenance?
TA: It can be difficult. There are problems with sunlight,
obviously. You just have to be prepared to reconstruct
it. A lot of things get carefully packed up into tissue for
transport and storage. There are also little things that I
have to remake, but mostly it gets preserved. In instal-
lations that involve elements of participation, perfor-
mance, or process, I can do this myself or others can
follow a set of instructions.
JR: Tell me about your show Hanging Matters (2008).
TA: It included three works. In The Importance
of Hanging (2008), I used an image from Iran of two
youths being executed by public hanging for taking
part in homosexual acts. I was thinking about the value
of life, what we value, and how human beings can be turned into objects or
things by the actions of other human beings. A living being can have his or her
life extinguished by mechanical means and be turned into a hanging piece of
material. I wanted to address the banal brutality and coldness of this act.
This contrasted with another piece, Matter to Matter (2008), which was
made of collaged shapes using a London gay listings magazine called QX, a
free magazine one sees in bars and clubs. I took one entire issue, tore it into
small pieces, and used all of the material to make colored elements based on
pattern, sympathetic color, and shape. I then pinned and nailed them directly
to the wall. Opposite this wall, I hung a copy of the magazine, a work titled QX
International (2008). Thus you see two forms of the same thing, two mani-
festations of the same material. I saw the pieces pinned to the wall as a
release of the spirit or potential energy contained within the intact magazine.
JR: What are some of your influences?
TA: Flix Gonzlez-Torres, Warhol, certainly Pop art, and I must admit, televi-
sion. Youre always seen as being really dumb if you say that you are influ-
enced by television, but I think television is fantastic. Im influenced by film-
maker David Lynch. I love that weird, very bizarre way of thinking when
some things presented arent rational. I like things that arent tied together
into a clear narrative. Im all for loose ends and unanswered questions,
because I think it is more truthfulin my life, anyway.
Joli Reichel is an arts writer based in Philadelphia.
Above: Installation view with (left) Help, 2002, and (right)
Untitled, 2002. Collage and glass, 170 x 120 cm. Right: Jewellery
Board, 2000. Cut-out paper and soft board, detail of installation.
Somewhere Between (exhibition and studio), 1996. Detail of
installation.
sculpture
B
A
M S a
G E
F
sculpture
B
A
M S a
G E
F
Jean Shin
EVERYDAY MONUMENTS
A Conversation with
sculpture
B
A
M S a
G E
F
sculpture
B
A
M S a
G E
F
BY SARAH TANGUY
Known for her labor-intensive installations of every-
day accumulations, Jean Shin broke new ground in
Everyday Monuments, a commission begun in 2007
at the invitation of Joanna Marsh, curator of contem-
porary art at the Smithsonian American Art Museum
in Washington, DC. Conceptually, the installation
added elements of narrative and a national scope to
Shins interest in community participation, while it
met the challenges of working in a miniature scale.
Sarah Tanguy: How did Everyday Monuments come about?
Jean Shin: I conceived the project by looking at Washington as the
United States capital with a national identity and as a place thats
always entangled with historic memory. The idea that the city was
built around public monuments was fascinatingour societal
ideals embodied in the heroic figure of the Lincoln Memorial, Maya
Lins wall engraved with the names of thousands of veterans, and
the interaction of visitors who leave flowers, notes, and their own
memories at these sites. Yet a massive void is left in the middle of
the citythe National Mall. I thought it was full of potential. It is
left empty for millions of people to gather in celebration and
protest. I was also considering my everyday experience of growing
up in Bethesda, Maryland, a suburb of Washington.
For the installation, I chose trophies, mini-monuments to ones
personal achievements, as equally symbolic materials to work with,
to make our experience of the historic monuments more intimate
and modest. Trophies collect dust in attics and basements, yet peo-
ple hold on to them because they preserve significant memories.
These objects pay tribute to childhood sports. For many, they retain
feelings of nostalgia or the hope of becoming something. For oth-
ers, they represent accomplishments earned over a lifetime. With
these ideas in mind, I imagined a large-scale project that would
involve the DC community. Locals would donate their trophies,
which would then be transformed and displayed in a large, indoor
site at the Smithsonian.
ST: How does the immigrant experience inform the installation?
JS: Typical of first-generation immigrants, my parents supported
our family through menial work. They left good jobs as professors
in South Korea to come to the U.S. In this project, I wanted to cele-
brate the unsung heroes in our society whose everyday labors go
unrecognized, and, in part, that includes populations who are new
to this country and live the American dream through hard work
and perseverance.
America was going into a recession, and people were losing their
jobs. During the last administration, I shared peoples feelings of
frustration and hopelessness about the direction this country was S
E
O
N
G
K
W
O
N
,
C
O
U
R
T
E
S
Y
T
H
E
A
R
T
I
S
T
Everyday Monuments, 2009. Sports
trophies, painted cast and sculpted
resins, and projections, 9.5 x 12 x 45 ft.
sculpture
B
A
M S a
G E
F
sculpture
B
A
M S a
G E
F
taking. And all of a sudden, Obama arrives and reinvigorates
a pass concept like hope. These were ideas that I was struggling
to articulate in my own work.
ST: Could you talk about the donation process and how you
altered the trophies?
JS: The first part of the processsoliciting the donationis critical
to my practice. I collaborate with the host institution about how
best to connect with the community, through local media, the
museums on-line presence, and outreach. The conversation begins
there, and the work shapes itself through the relationships with my
participants. With Everyday Monuments, I heard back from individ-
uals reflecting on the meaning of these old trophies in their lives.
I also reconnected with my high school, and the accumulation
occurred through a grassroots social network of local parents.
Within a month, we went from giving up hope to having thou-
sands brought to the museum and eventually arriving at my studio.
Each trophy was individually altered and meticulously
re-sculpted. My assistants and I inventoried, repaired, and pho-
tographed themtrying to classify the different sports and match
them with poses from various occupations. First, we cut the
arms and removed the rackets, balls, and so forth. When you look
at the figures on trophies very carefully, theyre strange and ideal-
izedtheir actions frozen at heightened moments. Then, we re-
attached the arms and legs in more natural, everyday poses. Next,
we handmade over 50 new objects and props, such as a typewriter,
a hammer, and a mop. These were cast in multiples, sprayed to
have a gold shine, and integrated into the altered figurines. In all,
we had almost 2,000 trophies, encompassing over 100 tasks and
occupations.
ST: What is the relationship between the altered trophies and
the wall projection?
JS: When you come into the gallery, you see a sea of golden fig-
urines and their pedestals, an aerial view of the trophies as a
glittering, triumphal mass. Because of the works density and
scale, it takes audiences a while to notice that the miniature
figures have been altered.
The accompanying wall projection allows viewers to feel imme-
diately surrounded by images of life-size figureslike being among
a crowd or walking in front of a frieze. The images change every
couple of minutes. I love the contrasting relationship between
the grand yet ephemeral projection and these cheap, elaborately
colored, plastic trophies with their marble pedestals that appear
so permanent. The aerial view of the National Mall is familiar to us
because of the medias obsession with the critical mass needed
to populate this signature public space, yet for the people who
are there, the intense experience among the crowd is quite differ-
ent. Simultaneously presenting the dual perspective of participant
and observer was important to this site-specific installation.
ST: How does Everyday Monuments fit into your earlier work? I
see less emphasis on Minimalism and feminism and more on
narrative. In terms of cast-offs and our consumer culture, losing
lottery tickets arent quite trophies.
60 Sculpture 29.3
S
E
O
N
G
K
W
O
N
,
C
O
U
R
T
E
S
Y
T
H
E
A
R
T
I
S
T
Everyday Monuments, 2009. Two details of installation.
sculpture
B
A
M S a
G E
F
sculpture
B
A
M S a
G E
F
S
E
O
N
G
K
W
O
N
,
C
O
U
R
T
E
S
Y
T
H
E
A
R
T
I
S
T
JS: The narrative aspect was heightened in this work, in part because of the nature of
trophies and the site. Its the first figurative installation that Ive ever engaged in. Thats
an interesting topic of discussion in my work, because I think of my cast-offs as surrogates
or group portraits of the community. Although my past works are abstract, they meta-
phorically represent the figure in many different guises. In Everyday Monuments, Im lit-
erally transforming the human body in sculpture. Unlike lottery tickets or umbrellas, the
trophies are donations from specific people who are represented and memorialized in this
work. This exchange with my audience and donors has been particularly meaningful.
ST: I also see a reference to classical sculptures like the Discobolus.
JS: Everyday Monuments evokes my earlier interest in classical sculpture from the
Parthenon friezes and in Rodin. I thought of the grand compositions, the multitude of
figures frozen in action and embedded into the architecture. All around Washington,
you see references to classical sculpture and architecture. I was also thinking about
works that came out of social realism, the New Deal, the WPAdepictions of the Ameri-
can workforce. Instead of the usual conversation about post-Minimalism, I revisited my
love of classical, figurative works and brought this into territory that was familiar to my
own process.
ST: Arent there a few instances where you intervene with traditional gender roles?
JS: It wasnt very conscious on my part, though my feminist background was proba-
bly present. My decisions came out of examining the pose. The arms of the basket-
ball player were reaching up, so we replaced the ball with a drill. There are just as
many female basketball trophies as there are male ones. I realized in my conversa-
tions with donors how proud parents were that their girls had participated in these
particular sports. What does this say about our culture when sports stars are predomi-
nately male? Or when beauty pageant trophies indicate a certain role for women and
ideas about beauty? My project attempted to update the trophies, to make them
reflect our shared, lived experience today, which is that women can pick up the drill
and men can push the stroller.
ST: What kind of feedback did you get?
JS: I was very moved by the number of donors who attended the opening. Its always a
wonderful occasion to have the project come full circle and to see them acknowledge
the exchange and transformation. I was nervous about their reaction to my alterations
and the removal of the sports references. Thankfully, they really got the piece: they
knew that it honored them but also celebrated others who never received trophies,
including myself. One family had donated several large martial arts trophies earned by
their deceased son, and I was struck by their generosity in the face of loss. Their partici-
pation deepened the projects significance for me: I recognized that the trophies werent
just about competition and glorifying the victor; sometimes they can symbolize unful-
filled hopes and dreams.
ST: How do your intentions differ from those of other artists who use everyday objects?
JS: Many contemporary artists use consumer products. However, over the last five
years, I have realized that my work is increasingly less about the materials themselves
and more about a community and a context. No longer are my materials found or
just purchased. Im actively soliciting participants to engage in this social exchange
with me. Its not just finding beauty in the mundane, its finding a connection with
someone. The finished installation brings the individual experience to the collective.
The labor-intensive, transformative process is like alchemy. By soliciting cast-off
materials from communities, the projects reveal how we live, who we are, what we
do. My primary interest is to figure out how to engage with the next community
and how we are going to begin a conversation, a relationship.
Sarah Tanguy is a Contributing Editor for Sculpture based in Washington, DC.
Everyday Monuments, 2009. Two details of installation.
sculpture
B
A
M S a
G E
F
sculpture
B
A
M S a
G E
F
_____________________
____________________
___________ ________________
sculpture
B
A
M S a
G E
F
sculpture
B
A
M S a
G E
F
____________
______________
_______________
sculpture
B
A
M S a
G E
F
sculpture
B
A
M S a
G E
F
B
a
s
i
c
/
S
t
u
d
e
n
t
/
S
e
n
i
o
r
P
r
o
f
e
s
s
i
o
n
a
l
U
n
i
v
e
r
s
i
t
y
A
s
s
o
c
i
a
t
e
F
r
i
e
n
d
P
a
t
r
o
n
B
a
s
i
c
V
e
n
d
o
r
P
r
e
f
e
r
r
e
d
V
e
n
d
o
r
Membership Benefits
2 free
images
6 free
images
25%
10 each
month
10 issues of Sculpture magazine
10 issues of Insider
Reduced registration fees for conferences
Access to password-protected areas of www.sculpture.org
Discounts from ISC member vendors
Listing on Portfolio/ Inclusion in ISC websites Directory
A copy of an ISC Press publication
Image of your artwork on the ISC websites homepage
Acknowledgement as a professional artist in Portfolio
Ability to nominate students for ISC Student Award
Aknowledgement of support in every issue of Sculpture
Discount on advertisements in Sculpture
Inclusion on the ISCs website as a contributor
Inclusion in Sculptures and websites exhibition listings
and features
Discounts on multiple copies of Sculpture
2 tickets to the Lifetime Achievement Award Gala
Gift subscriptions to Sculpture
Invitations to special events and symposiums
Opportunity to make presentations at conferences and
post articles on the ISCs website
Inclusion in conference programs
10 each
month
for 3
faculty
10 free
images
25%
10 each
month
10 each
month
for 3
members
6 free
images
25%
4 free
images
30%
25%
discount
1
10 each
month
10 each
month
for 10
members
company
logo
30%
free
2
for trade
fair
4 free
images
30%
New Membership Benefits at a Glance

As you may have heard, exciting changes are happening at the International Sculpture Center! The ISC has created four
new membership categories and enhanced benefits at each level. And now, you can easily look up categories and benefits
with the ISCs online Membership Chart. This straightforward visual guide can help you find the membership category
thats perfect for you. For more information, please visit www.sculpture.org _____________
sculpture
B
A
M S a
G E
F
sculpture
B
A
M S a
G E
F
Idyllwild, CA. Idyllwild Arts Summer Program offers one-week workshops
in sculpture, including Paperplaster Sculpture and Mold-Making (Trudy
Golley); Small Scale Metal Casting (Paul Leathers); Ceramics: Monoprint
and Molds (Arthur Gonzalez); Native American Flutemaking (Marvin Yazzie);
and Metals Week: 6 Workshops. Other courses available in ceramics, painting,
printmaking, weaving, mixed media, and more. All skill levels. For information
and course catalogue, call 951/659-2171, extension 2365, or e-mail <summer@
idyllwildarts.org>. Web site: <www.idyllwildarts.org>.
Sculptors Ferrocement Manual, published by ferrocement.com, includes
sample photos and text covering traditional armatures of steel, as well
as use of fiber such as hemp and woven cotton muslin. The :o||c|
|e||c:emen| |cnoc| is one of a four-manual series, which includes water
tanks and reservoirs, with sanitation and rainwater chapters. Another
valuable resource is the |e||c:emen| |coe tcn||o:||cn manual; it takes
one through the process of building an artistic sculptured home that pays
for itself through reduced insurance and maintenance. The fourth manual
includes photos and economics leading to a very low-cost shelter made
from cement, bamboo, biological fiber, and acrylic; here, sculptors explore
techniques of beautiful, super low- cost sculptured shelter suitable for
billions who need shelter, as well as discerning billionaires seeking high
quality of life in a sustainable human culture. These durable field manuals
are also suitable for libraries and classrooms, and they may be purchased
on-line at <www.ferrocement.com>.
MAkkttAc
_____
_________
___________________
________________
sculpture
B
A
M S a
G E
F
sculpture
B
A
M S a
G E
F
_________________ ____________
_____________________
____________________________
__________________
_________________
_______
sculpture
B
A
M S a
G E
F
sculpture
B
A
M S a
G E
F
__________________
sculpture
B
A
M S a
G E
F
sculpture
B
A
M S a
G E
F
________________________________
sculpture
B
A
M S a
G E
F
sculpture
B
A
M S a
G E
F
J
O
N
T
Y
W
I
L
D
E
WAKtrt ttb, 0. k.
Peter Randall-Page
Yorkshire Sculpture Park
Yorkshire Sculpture Park recently
presented Peter Randall-Pages most
extensive exhibition to date, with
over 100 works displayed within the
gallery and across the adjoining
grounds. Contextualized with a dis-
play of maquettes and drawings,
the show aimed to create a deeper
understanding of Randall-Pages
work, particularly in relation to
organic tensions in nature and the
dichotomy between order and chaos.
In a world removed from the
natural order, Randall-Page offers a
reminder of the inescapable ties
between man and nature. This was
reflected in two monolithic sculp-
tures created for the exhibition
||o:|o and tc|oeach carved
from Kilkenny limestone, weighing
over 13 tons, and standing over
two meters high. ||o:|o appears
as a mass of dividing cells, super-
abundant with their potential for
life, and tc|o bears a resem-
blance to the human body, its com-
pressed energy suggestive of organs
such as the intestines and brain.
Both works explore growth systems
with mathematical and geometric
precision, revealing the remarkable
similarities between plant and bod-
ily processes, a recurring theme in
Randall-Pages sculpture.
Jazz forms another important
component of his work, and many
of his sculptures seemingly hum
with unreleased vigor. In |c:| |n
m, 3eo, named after a Duke
Ellington song, the animated lines
applied to the surface of the stone
echo improvisational jazz. |n ||no
c| |cn| uses zigzag labyrinthine
patterning on three marble spheres
to evoke the tunes of Thelonious
Monk. Although these works are
recent, Randall-Pages preoccupa-
tion with jazz is not a new phenom-
enon: I first encountered this facet
of his work in /||e| 3e|e m|||, a
startling piece inspired by the songs
of the tragic singer and created
during a Tate St Ives residency in
the 1990s. Its coiled, voluptuous
dynamism seems to pulsate with
an almost audible energy, leaving
a lasting and indelible impression.
These works certainly dance to
their own beata mellow, archaic
rhythmbut they are created with
exacting technical execution. The
reviews
Peter Randall-Page, Stone Dreaming,
2009. Lewisian gneiss, 140 x 283 x
170 cm.
sculpture
B
A
M S a
G E
F
sculpture
B
A
M S a
G E
F
70 Sculpture 29.3
J
O
N
T
Y
W
I
L
D
E
forms, although solid and volu-
metric, are never still; instead, they
appear on the cusp of mutation.
|o|||||:c||cn |, ||.||cn demon-
strates the importance of the rela-
tionship between singularity and
multiplicity, particularly the complex
and mysterious processes behind the
evolution of a unit into a multifarious
mass. Randall-Pages particular brand
of monumentality is achieved
through the creation of these simpli-
fied masses, and the work is often
seen in isolation, clearly defined and
not fused into the immediate envi-
ronment. The sculptures stand digni-
fied and alone, reminiscent of the
ancient menhirs rooted with sym-
bolic intent as immobile markers of
eternity within Britains landscape.
Randall-Pages work reveals an
innate technical skill and deep
understanding of the individual char-
acteristics of his chosen material. He
received much of his early training as
a carver on the restoration of Wells
Cathedral in Somerset, and he has
had work sited in the Bishops Palace,
Lincoln and Temple Church, Bristol.
These ecclesiastical beginnings have
clearly served him well with some of
his chosen titles|cne ||ecm|n
and ||no |cwhich suggest a cer-
tain otherworldliness. But Randall-
Page is just as attracted to the for-
mal qualities of a place as he is to its
intellectual possibilities. Indeed, the
formal and intellectual qualities of
his work are fully integrated, as in
|ce |n ||e t|coo, a series made
from distinctive Rosso Luana marble.
Here, the forms share the geometry
of Platonic solids, yet the stones
extraordinary structure offers a
moment of quiet reverie, as though
we were momentarily able to view
the universe in miniature.
|nc tc|e
SAW IsAWct sco
Gail Wight
Patricia Sweetow Gallery
A haunting sadness emanates from
the delicate black butterflies in Gail
Wights |c| oe |c||||cn |co |e
co|, even with no understanding
of the title. One hundred slender
pins hold the wings in place as the
glowing bodies pulse with light,
their life force apparently helpless,
encased in Plexiglas as if on scien-
tific display. As a young girl, I, too,
captured butterflies and doused
them with lighter fluid, their tender
bodies suffocated from the fumes,
left for me to examine without
struggle and pin to boards for sci-
ence class. On summer nights, I
also collected lighting bugs in jars
as flickering trophies. Wights work
triggers these memories with a
visceral ambivalence, leaving us
entranced and horrified at our
actions as would-be scientists. The
title literally translates as having
black butterflies every day, a
French idiom for depression that ref-
erences the work of Walter
Freeman, a 20th- century scientist
Top left: Peter Randall-Page, Mind Map
I-V, 2009. Clay, 2 meters wide each.
Above: Peter Randall-Page, Multipli-
cation by Division, 2000. Limestone,
100 x 103 x 106 cm. each. Left: Peter
Randall-Page, Rocks in my Bed, 2005.
Canvas, rock, and paint, installation
view.
sculpture
B
A
M S a
G E
F
sculpture
B
A
M S a
G E
F
T
O
P
:
C
O
U
R
T
E
S
Y
P
A
T
R
I
C
I
A
S
W
E
E
T
O
W
G
A
L
L
E
R
Y
/
B
O
T
T
O
M
:
C
O
U
R
T
E
S
Y
T
H
E
W
O
R
L
D
O
F
L
Y
G
I
A
C
L
A
R
K
C
U
L
T
U
R
A
L
A
S
S
O
C
I
A
T
I
O
N
,
R
I
O
D
E
J
A
N
E
I
R
O
who advocated the use of lobotomy
as the treatment of choice for
depression.
Wight has built a career on work
that critiques science as the lan-
guage of authority. With humor and
intelligence, she turns scientific
techniques into parodies of them-
selves, exposing their inherent vul-
nerabilities and our suspicions that
they might not know quite as
much as they proclaim. In her recent
show, however, the overt humor
was replaced by an abstracted sim-
plicity that revealed the seriousness
of her content.
In ten|e| c| 6|c.||,, a forest of
eight-foot-high, rolled rice paper
tubes gently sways with the viewers
approach. Each light and fragile
column bears manipulated photo-
graphic images, mirror-reflected
to create abstract symmetrical pat-
terns that become specific land-
scapes on closer approach. A blade
of grass, a thorny cactus, snow-cov-
ered branches, a cloudless blue sky:
each image depicts a site of natural
wonder threatened by climate
change. Inspired by the notion of
deep time, these dangling core sam-
ples depict a world destined to exist
only as a memory, collective or spe-
cific to the artist. A tiny red light
twinkles at the base of those
columns with sound elements trig-
gered by the viewerfor instance,
a coyote howl and a hawks screech
are paired with the sounds of man-
made intruders, the chainsaw and
the airplane. ten|e| c| 6|c.||, grace-
fully bridged the bright illumination
of the main gallery and the relative
darkness of the installation space
with an ease unusual in media instal-
lations. In the dark, the columns
glow with a eerie beauty; light
reveals their details and content.
t|ee documents the straightfor-
ward beauty of a most understated
natural phenomenonthe growth
of slime mold. A creature so ubiqui-
tous as to be the mascot of the
everyday, slime mold is the stuff of
compost and rotting logs. Wight
grew her specimens in Petri dishes
in her kitchen and then preserved
the process as time-lapse video
images on a grid of monitors. A self-
proclaimed stalker of scientists and
scientific practices, she continues to
produce works that captivate us
with the magic and pretensions of
21st-century knowledge.
|cnnc :|omc:|e|
Mt WWtAott s
The Quick and the Dead
Walker Art Center
The quick and the dead, a phrase
from the King James translation of
the Bible, refers to the collection of
souls, those now physically alive
and those whose bodies have died.
An evocation of the split between
matter and spirit, as well as their
mysterious relation, the title offered
a good entry point into this
immensely engaging show. Curator
Peter Eleey (former director of
Creative Time) took 90-plus objects
by 53 artists and turned them into
something like a single work. This
muscular feat of curation depended
on the inclusion of a few things that
didnt begin as artworks, such as
mathematician Anthony Phillipss
sphere eversion schematic, a
series of drawings detailing how
a sphere can be turned inside out
without rupturing, and Harold
Edgertons eternally nifty 1950s
high-speed photos of exploding milk
glasses and atomic bombs.
These things marked one side of
the show, while Catherine Murphys
drawings and paintings of hidden-
ness (log interiors and dirt under
snow) and Vija Celmins vibratingly
intense painting of the night sky
defined the other. Between them
lets say between physics and imagi-
nationwere the many fascinating
experiments and embodied essays
that made up the rest of the exhibi-
tiona kind of R&D lab for con-
sciousness in the grip of matter and
time.
Most of the show was sculptural,
from Michael Sailstorfers car tire
and wheel assembly grinding stinkily
along on the wall and shedding
crumbs of rubber (/e|| || |e|ne
/o|c|c|n3e|||n, 2006) to Jason
Dodges little brick of fabric whose
warp and weft document the height
of the stratosphere (/|c.e ||e
Above: Gail Wight, Center of Gravity,
2008. Rice paper, Plexiglas, electron-
ics, light, and sound, dimensions
variable. Right: Lygia Clark, Bicho,
1960. Aluminum, 15 x 15 x 20 in.
From The Quick and the Dead.
sculpture
B
A
M S a
G E
F
sculpture
B
A
M S a
G E
F
72 Sculpture 29.3
T
O
P
:
C
O
U
R
T
E
S
Y
T
H
E
A
R
T
I
S
T
A
N
D
J
O
H
A
N
N
K
N
I
G
,
B
E
R
L
I
N
/
B
O
T
T
O
M
:
C
O
U
R
T
E
S
Y
M
E
T
R
O
P
I
C
T
U
R
E
S
,
N
Y
Hec||e|, woven in 2007 by Algerian
weaver Djidjiga Meffrer), to perfor-
mative pieces such as George Brechts
1960s event scores. The show also
included documentation of sculp-
tural events via video.
Two of the videos were emblem-
atic: Paul Ramrez Jonass 20-minute
|cne| |c, (1997) documents his
(unsuccessful) attempt to lengthen
the day by chasing the setting sun
flat-out in his car, camera in hand.
Hours of driving added only a cou-
ple of minutes to the days length,
but the attempt is heart-wrenching
and somehow very funny. Sail-
storfers video of an exploding shed
more successfully does techno-
magic. The artist built a sheet-metal
shed, stuffed it with explosives, set
up a high-speed video camera, and
flipped both switches. The shed
obviously blew itself to smithereens,
but thats not what you see here.
Sailstorfer used only the initial
micro-seconds of video and ran
them forward and back, weaving a
moving image of the shed breath-
ing, about to fly apart, pulling
together again, and heaving out-
ward. Its a great image of matter
under assault by force and time.
Any sculptor who regularly faces
the intransigence of the physical
world and the grip of gravity and
physics will love this piece.
In similar fashion, other works
embody almost every aspect of
thoughtful physicalitys costs and
gifts. Skeletons and skulls, stuffed
dead animals, models of transfor-
mation (Lygia Clarks 3|:|c [/n|mc|]
is a deft example), many kinds of
extension and weaving, traces and
bits of the artists bodies saved or
markedthe show was not so much
a collection of conceptual art
(although that was a big chunk of
it) as it was a handbook on the colli-
sion of concept and matter, in
ones own body, in art, in technol-
ogy, in religion, in philosophy.
The Quick and the Dead opened
a door out of the museum, by way
of the museum. Eleey offers this
quotation from Marcel Proust in
his introductory essay: It is only
the death of the work of art in the
museum which brings it to life.
Conceptual works, like those in the
show, indeed suffer a kind of death-
in-life: they aspire to membership in
the actual world but can exert their
influence only in the as-if world of
the art museum. They bid fair,
though, to exit the museum in the
heads of spectators, and enter real
life as conceptual tools and toys.
/nn ||e||co
Ntw osK
Tony Oursler
Metro Pictures
Since the mid-1970s Tony Oursler
has broken down conventional
boundaries between media, produc-
ing work that functions as a pecu-
liar metaphor for the human condi-
tion in a media-saturated age.
Strange blends of serious-minded-
ness and humor have become
essential character traits in his ani-
mated forms, which unexpectedly
float in the air or rest on the floor.
Ourslers recent exhibition hinted
that his work has taken a turn, a
sensation of calmness replacing the
quirky and untamed. Walking
through the show, one observed that
he is recycling elements from previ-
Left: Michael Sailstorfer, Zeit ist keine
AutobahnBerlin, 2006. Tire, iron,
motor, and electricity, 56.7 x 51.9 x
26.5 in. FromThe Quick and the Dead.
Below: Tony Oursler, Marlboro, Camel,
Winston, Parliament, Salem, Marlboro
Light, American Spirit, 2009. 10 PVC
tubes and video projection, installation
view.
sculpture
B
A
M S a
G E
F
sculpture
B
A
M S a
G E
F
C
O
U
R
T
E
S
Y
S
P
E
R
O
N
E
W
E
S
T
W
A
T
E
R
,
N
Y
ous series (including painting, pro-
jections on small surfaces, and cut-
out projections) and incorporating
them into his new constructions.
This diverse collection is less about
the bizarre and more about human
frailty, with several pieces address-
ing the significance of commun-
ication and understanding. Here,
Oursler employs the visual lan-
guage of popular culture to tackle
desire, addiction, dread, and frag-
mentation in simulations of cig-
arettes, cell phones, and lottery
scratch cards.
His signature technique of project-
ing moving images onto sculptural
pieces continues with the huge
cigarette-maze |c|||c|c, tcme|,
H|n|cn, |c|||cmen|, c|em, |c||
|c|c ||||, /me||:cn |||| (2009).
Devoid of sound and narrative, this
commanding piece, which con-
sumed the entrance gallery in an
arresting vertical forest of smolder-
ing human-sized cigarettes, func-
tions as a silent moviethe viewer
becomes a player on its ingenious
stage. Its taboo subject signifies
addiction and the struggle to quit.
Each stick languidly burns, while an
audio track plays breathing and the
whisper of burning paper. The real-
istic cigarette columns, branded
with logos, stand as eroding monu-
ments to human vice.
|eoe|c| |ee|.e |c|e ||.e |c||c|
(2009), a floating eight-foot-long,
five-dollar bill, features an eerily
animated Abe Lincoln who articu-
lates phrases such as a house
divided cannot stand. Despite the
cleverness of this political work,
the audio, which plays a significant
role, could hardly be understood
because of the other sound pieces
in the gallery. This also applied to
|c c| |||eno |e||n |||eno
c.|n Hc||o u||| ||||c| (2009) in
which a peep-hole offers a glimpse
inside a miniature house where
actors carry out a melodramatic
pageant focused on phobias and
anxiety.
3eoc|eo, e| |c| |||e, |on|, ,,,
|c||e| |c,, He|:cme |c |c /ec
(2009) features seven gigantic
lottery cards. Projections of a gam-
blers wobbly fingers scratch at the
surfaces in the hope of revealing tri-
umphant signs and numbersthe
size of the cards accents the scale
of this obsessive, but popular habit.
A projected finger plays with the
keypad of /e||cn (2009), a colossal
cell phone turned on its side. Here,
Oursler addresses entrapment by a
device to which increasing numbers
of people seem surgically attached.
The effectiveness of this new body
of work does not lie in the power of
its individual forms, but in Ourslers
willingness to step outside his safe
haven. Transformation can be thorny,
but it is necessary if one hopes to
continue down a path of exploration
and growth.
||c|ne / ||n
Ntw osK
Evan Penny
Sperone Westwater
What is real and what is true? These
questions become increasingly
pressing at a time when means are
available to spread data with the
mere tap of a key and digital tools
enable us to distort information
easily. Such issues came to mind
when walking through Evan Pennys
recent exhibition of figurative sculp-
ture (all made of silicone, pigment,
hair and aluminum, with the addi-
tion of fabric in some cases, and all
2008). The show featured work
informed by digitally manipulated
photography, time-lapse photogra-
phy, the science of color printing,
and high-tech lighting. Like Gerhard
Richter, Penny is interested in trans-
posing photographic effects to his
own medium.
Few would mistake figures trun-
cated, distorted, or multiplied to
this extent for the real thing,
regardless of how close the treat-
ment of the body with its overlying
skin and hair comes to the look of
real men and women. But in this
age, when plastic surgery has
become prevalent among those who
can afford it and digitally corrected
photographs of our imperfect bodies
have become normative, we must
admit that the distinction between
reality and fiction is becoming
increasingly blurry. While Pennys
sculpture is perfectly tailored for
our information age, it also tackles
some problems of great antiquity.
One of these is the portrait bust,
which has become relatively rare in
contemporary sculptural practice.
Penny has been exploring this form,
which was fully developed during
the Roman Republic, for some time
now. The Romans of the Republic
were willing to accept a mere frag-
ment of a likeness, provided that
this fragment include the head with
the facial features rendered as
truthfully as possible, in other
words, without idealization. Penny
likewise shuns idealization and aims
for the intensity of the veristic tra-
dition.
He also accepts the widespread
notion that the image is completed
in the mind of the beholder. Most
people acknowledge that the por-
trait bust stands in for the entire
figure, though in this show, the arbi-
trary truncations were emphasized
by extremely thin metal ledges that
followed the curvature at the bot-
tom of the arms and torsos, so that
it appeared as if the busts were sus-
pended in thin air in front of the
wallsor rising from the floor, like
Venus from the sea, in the case of
the lone colossus (another classical
form of sculpture), cut just beneath
the hips, as if awkwardly cropped
in a photograph. In some cases, the
busts read splendidly from the
front, but from the side, they are
much thinner than they should
bephotographs, likewise, collapse
volume. Clearly, when we view
these sculptures from the front, we
Evan Penny, Back of Danny, variation #4, 2008. Silicone, pigment, hair,
and aluminum, 24 x 28.5 x 6 in.
sculpture
B
A
M S a
G E
F
sculpture
B
A
M S a
G E
F
74 Sculpture 29.3
C
H
A
R
L
E
S
R
A
Y
,
C
O
U
R
T
E
S
Y
M
A
T
T
H
E
W
M
A
R
K
S
G
A
L
L
E
R
Y
,
N
Y
project roundness and depth
beyond their silhouettes, for we
have experienced bodies in space
before and know that any one view
provides only part of the informa-
tion. Other figures appear terribly
distorted before we even begin
to examine them from other angles.
They can be stretched along a pow-
erful diagonal, as in e||, .c||c||cn
/:, or pulled vertically, as in |c|e
||e|:|, .c||c||cn /,a nod at
unorthodox modes of manipulating
form in Modernist as well as
Renaissance practice (Holbeins
/m|ccoc| and Parmigianinos
e||c|||c||).
3c:| c| |cnn,, .c||c||cn /! was
turned with its back to the room,
the front of the head placed close
to the wall. Its most important fea-
ture, namely the face, is almost
entirely missingin fact, it is sliced
offa particularly perverse take on
the traditional bust. However, the
remaining parts are modeled in a
mesmerizing wayPenny does not
take casts of his modelsand the
hues, textures, and blemishes of the
skin are brilliantly seizedPenny
paints into the thin superimposed
layers of silicone that he pours into
his mold. The final touch involves
punching in the hair and, here, the
stubble of the beard, which, once
more, achieve breathtaking life-like-
ness. Penny displays extraordinary
powers of mimesis and then
reminds you, again and again, that
his work, like so much else, is noth-
ing more than a construct. In
|cnc|c|c tcn.e|c||cn /:, .c||c
||cn /., he translates a continuous
photographic take of a speaking
woman into sculptural terms. Here,
the idea trumps the result, as Penny
pays homage to the Futurist ambi-
tion of showing a sequence of
movements across a span of time,
intimating at the horrors that may
lie in store for us as we continue to
toy with the building blocks of life.
||:|ce| /m,
Ntw osK
Charles Ray
Matthew Marks
Charles Rays wizardry with bound-
ary-breaking was conspicuous in
this low-tech but high-interest exhi-
bition. Three works from a little
more than 20 years ago defied ceil-
ing, floor, and wall, showing the
viewer how simple interventions
can result in sculptures of startling
intelligence and rough beauty. In
each piece, Ray conceals a motor
or pump that causes the sculpture
to do what it does, but his instru-
ments, while concealed, feel rudi-
mentary. Ray is a thoroughly classi-
cal postmodern sculptor, if such
a characterization makes sense. He
creates one-off pieces that range
widely without necessarily relating
closely to each otherfor example,
there are the pictures of him
wrapped around a branch in a tree,
which contrast with the Minimalist
|n| 3c\ (1986), a black steel cube
filled to the brim with black ink (the
latter is a cousin of |n| ||ne [1987],
one of the three works in the show).
Much of the pleasure of this
exhibition derived from speculation
about how the sculptures were
devised. Press materials confirm that
machinery of a basic sort is involved,
but still, we dont know |cu each
sculpture was built, and so a mys-
tery attaches itself to the works. |n|
||ne is a marvelous trick of the eye,
consisting of a thin column of ink
running from ceiling to wall. Using
an electric motor and pump, Ray
has created a compelling illusion
whose subtle changes document
movementfrom a few feet away,
the line feels solid and static, but
up close one notices small aberra-
tions on the surface, which demon-
strate that the ink is, in fact, mov-
ing. Just as the viewer must focus
sharply on the ink surface of |n| 3c\
in order to know that the top of the
cube is liquid and not solid, so he or
she must closely investigate the
line of ink to determine that it is not
a solid line but one that flows and
maintains fluid properties.
|nn|n c| (1987) and |c.|n
H||e (1988), while not so dramatic,
are also prepossessing. In |nn|n
c|, a section of the floor, a circle
24 inches in diameter, rotates at 33
rpm. Bemused at first, viewers won-
der about its reference as well as
its construction: Does the spinning
spot refer to music LPs, which were
ubiquitous at the time? Whatever
its meaning, |nn|n c| exists as
a compelling visual conundrum in
which a piece of the floor rotates
at a consistent speed. The gee-whiz
factor, present in all three sculp-
tures, is particularly strong here.
|c.|n H||e (1988) also has a
seemingly simple appearance; it is
composed of a single strand of wire
8.5 feet in length. Both ends come
out of the wall some 14 inches apart
from each other. Gradually the wire
Top: Charles Ray, Ink Line, 1987. Ink, electric motor, pump, and plastic,
dimensions variable. Above: Charles Ray, Spinning Spot, 1987. Aluminum,
electric motor, and electric components, 24 in. diameter.
sculpture
B
A
M S a
G E
F
sculpture
B
A
M S a
G E
F
T
O
P
:
C
O
U
R
T
E
S
Y
T
H
E
M
A
T
T
R
E
S
S
F
A
C
T
O
R
Y
,
P
I
T
T
S
B
U
R
G
H
/
B
O
T
T
O
M
:
B
E
N
D
E
S
O
T
O
moves in and out of the wallas
one end lengthens and pulls out
toward the viewer, the other end
diminishes and moves back into the
wall. |c.|n H||e, like its two com-
panions, may seem conceptually
simple; however, all three pieces
develop a singular sleight of hand
and prove compelling as art.
|cnc||cn 6ccomcn
t 11ssussM
Thaddeus Mosley
Mattress Factory
In a post-studio era in which con-
cept overrides object, Thaddeus
Mosleys recent exhibition ran in
the opposite direction. This show of
work from the late 1990s to 2009
was vast and passionate, providing
viewers with a celebration of astute
materiality. Mattress Factory co-
directors and curators Barbara
Luderowski and Michael Olijnyk
took their inspiration from Mosleys
home/studioonly blocks away
from the MF.
Mosley, a jazz aficionado who
began making sculpture in the
1950s, credits Marshall Stearns
book |e |c|, c| |c, photographs
of grave markers in a Georgia
cemetery where slaves had been
buried, and Constantin Brancusis
3||o |n c:e as crucial influences.
Walking through this display of
closely placed unique forms sug-
gested a journey through the inte-
rior of a fantastical forest or a visit
to a dance studio filled with color-
ful choreography.
A sense of timelessness pervaded
the sizeable installation, which took
up two floors of the museum. The
fourth floor featured an array of
80 principally vertical, carved-wood,
abstract sculptures, plus some
mixed-media organic assemblages.
According to Mosley, about 30 of
the pieces had never been exhibited
before and 40 had not been previ-
ously shown in Pittsburgh. The
third-floor installation included por-
tions of his North Side home and
studio, which were documented,
moved, and reconstructed in the
galleries. An interactive Giga-Pan
of his home was projected in one
gallery, and an ongoing video of an
interview with the artist, conducted
by Sam Black of the John Heinz
History Center, provided insightful
stories.
Meticulously carved and wonder-
fully assembled, Mosleys work
evinces the skill of a remarkable
artist who taught himself his craft.
Since his exhibition at the Carnegie
Museum of Art in 1997, his work
has undergone a certain transfor-
mation. This is most apparent in
sculptures incorporating the found
metal cast-offs that he has collected
for over 20 years. The tall and strik-
ing ||ce||eo |mo|c||cn includes
a large, mangled piece of steel dis-
carded from a rail yard. Similarly,
||.|oeo |e|e features two huge
stainless steel bowls bought from
a closed bakery.
Signature pieces made entirely
of carved wood included |c||cu|n
c:e, a graceful arabesque that
tops 11 feet, and ||,||m|:
|\|en|cn, which cranes to the sky
like a giant heron about to launch
into flight. Hcmcn |n ||e /|ne, at
nine feet tall, rises from a small
maple log; vines wind up the carved
walnut female shape. Mosley
mostly produces abstract forms,
though he says, I started out doing
figures.
The show also included three anti-
war pieces made in response to
Iraq, including the thorny Heccn
|c| |c ||c|e:||cn and cc|| |c|
cc||, made from pieces of an ani-
mal jaw and other bones collected
by a University of Pittsburgh profes-
sor. Mosley says that it has to do
with the idea that, with all of the
religious philosophy that we have
about humanity, its still about
tooth for tooth.
This unusual exhibition not only
testified to Pittsburghs rich history
as told by Mosley, a New Castle
native who attended the University
of Pittsburgh majoring in English
and journalism, it also focused
attention on the art of a prolific
African American sculptor who
turned 83 last year, who worked
as a journalist for the Pittsburgh
tco||e| and national magazines,
who had a job with the U.S. Post
Office, and who still found time to
be a committed artist.
||c|ne / ||n
Bous1oW
Light as Air
Discovery Green
Discovery Green, located on 12
acres in downtown Houston, is
Space Citys newest venue for out-
door public art. Its recent exhibi-
tion, Light as Air, was organized
by Sara Kellner, a Houston-based
independent curator, and featured
inflatable art by Susan Robb
(Seattle), Pat Oleszko (New York),
Above: Thaddeus Mosley, installa-
tion view of Sculpture Studio/Home.
Below: Sharon Engelstein, Tether-
twin, 2002. Fabric and forced air, 10
x 12 x 15 ft. From Light as Air.
sculpture
B
A
M S a
G E
F
sculpture
B
A
M S a
G E
F
76 Sculpture 29.3
T
O
P
:
S
A
R
A
K
E
L
L
N
E
R
Sharon Engelstein, and David Graeve
(both Houston). Many people have
fond memories of giant inflatables
and holiday parades, but Kellner
chose the medium for its ability to
playfully engage a broad audience
with complex ideas.
At the opening, Robb addressed
the park audience with conviction:
There is an island of plastic in the
Pacific Ocean thats the size of Texas,
and it is created by us and our plas-
tic crap. Behind her on the grass
stood Hc|m||, 6|cn| 3|c:| cc|
(2008), a field of black plastic tubes,
some reaching 50 feet high. The
bags reacted to heat from the sun,
which caused them to rise, like hot
air balloons. Animated by breezes,
the cc| swayed back and forth as
if they were dancing. Whenever a
passing cloud blocked the sun, they
descended on the ground in a heap,
like a giant plastic puddle.
Engelsteins e||e||u|n (2002) and
6|een 6c||, (2008) offered a counter-
point to Robbs cc|, paying
homage to our progress as a civi-
lization. Inspired by geometry,
Engelstein creates her work in a vir-
tual space using high-tech computer
modeling programs. When her cel-
lular forms are translated into giant
balloons, they become endearingly
squat and rounded, like immense
robot puppies.
Graeves installation echoed Engel-
steins cellular structures. He clus-
tered nine oversized photographic
balloons together to form a giant
molecular structure suspended over
Kinder Lake. The balloons were
internally lit with light wands.
During the day, you saw the photos
(ranging from children in Discovery
Green to political demonstrators)
on the works surface. At night, the
hanging orbs were transformed into
lenses that projected the photo-
graphs onto the water below.
Kellner had worked with Oleszko
in the past, so she asked the artist
to lend |cc||cce cno |cn|c, ||ee
(1995) to the show. The most humor-
ous work in Light as Air, |cc||cce
consists of a pair of giant feet with
pointy red shoes and striped socks
(like those worn by the witch in |e
H|c|o c| 0) designed to stick out
from the side of a building. Kellner
sited the piece next to a small build-
ing at the crest of a sloping lawn,
leading to the outdoor performance
stage, a nod to Oleszkos work as a
performance artist. As Kellner
explained, Oleszkohas used inflata-
bles to great benefit to make works
that are very humorous and often-
times [have] social and political con-
tentShe was the first artist I ever
worked with who did inflatables, and
so, in some ways, this inspired the
idea of doing the whole project. Like
its featured works, Light as Air
addressed political content but with
a sense of humor and wonder on a
grand scale.
/|||cn |on|e|
tAMsst bst, 0W1Ast o
Gareth Lichty
Cambridge Galleries
Trained as a sculptor, Gareth Lichty
weaves. |cne, the single installa-
tion making up his recent exhibi-
tion, consists of one enormous
weavingshown in three separate
sectionsthat weighs in at over
2,200 pounds. The mass has every-
thing to do with choice of materi-
als, for Lichty has moved way
beyond anything remotely resem-
bling standard textile fibers to use,
instead, basic garden hose.
|cne has five miles of the stuff
so far, and counting. The process of
construction matters, for each sec-
tion of the work is an enormous
three-dimensional tubular construc-
tion rather than a two-dimensional
weaving. Lichty suspends a circle
of garden hoses vertically from the
rafters of his studio and then pro-
ceeds to weave lengths of other
hosessome 300 to datethrough
them using a standard over-and-
under pattern and working from the
ground up with the aid of scaffold-
ing.
What we were given to see in the
gallery, however, bore little resem-
blance to what Lichty constructed
in the studio. The three sections of
|cne sprawled untidily across the
floor, lumpy green objects sagging
and deforming under the gravita-
tional enormity of their own weight
that only just managed to be dis-
cernibly three-dimensional things
and not simply flat mats.
|cne is the product of an artifac-
tual, highly structured, rules-oriented
processi.e., weavingthat Lichty
then allows to be aesthetically sub-
jugated to a rules-oriented process
of a much higher ordergravity
to become, in the end, an object
that, like an installation, reworks
a gallery space as a kind of land-
scape. The lumps, folds, and convo-
lutions of these tightly woven hoses
evoke a strange geography, a topo-
graphical pattern that rises and falls
in wave-like ripples (courtesy of
the underlying woven structure) but
Above: Susan Robb, Warmth, Giant Black Toobs, 2008. Plastic bags, dimen-
sions variable. From Light as Air. Below: Gareth Lichty, Range, 2007ongoing.
5 miles of hand-woven garden hose.
sculpture
B
A
M S a
G E
F
sculpture
B
A
M S a
G E
F
T
O
P
:
A
N
N
E
T
T
E
M
E
S
S
A
G
E
R
A
N
D
A
D
A
G
P
/
B
O
T
T
O
M
:
L
A
U
R
E
N
T
L
E
C
A
T
,
A
D
A
G
P
,
C
O
U
R
T
E
S
Y
G
A
L
L
E
R
Y
M
A
R
I
A
N
G
O
O
D
M
A
N
,
P
A
R
I
S
/
N
Y
which is marked by large hills and
deep, convoluted valleys created by
the arrangement of these rumpled
and slovenly tubes of rubber.
|cne is also highly recursive. The
larger tubular forms are, of course,
repeated at a structural level in the
garden hoses themselves, and the
very weave of the work is conceptu-
ally reiterated at a smaller scale in
the decorative herringbone pattern
of the hoses, which are made up of
an underlying weave of composite
materials. |cne thus ranges up
and down the scale of things, from
the overtness of the large, flabby
forms splayed across the floor to the
minuter end of things where deco-
rative herringbone patterns come
into play. In this way, it forms an
aesthetic take on the recursive realm
of fractals, the branch of mathe-
matics dealing with self-similarity in
the worldhow the frond of a fern,
for example, resembles itself.
In the end, the real world has
everything to do with |cne, no
matter the manufactured artificiality
of its rubber garden hoses and their
pungent new hose smell. Lichty
may haphazardly arrange the work
on the floor to forge a loose resem-
blance to an ersatz landscape, but
at every level, it manifests real, ele-
mental patterns that build universes.
6|| |:|||c,
loWboW
Annette Messager
The Hayward
The watchful eyes of |, |c||e,
proliferating London Underground
posters, announced the opening of
Annette Messagers first U.K. retro-
spective. Documenting the evolu-
tion of her work over the last four
decades, from the intimate pieces
of the 1970s to recent large-scale
kinetic installations, the exhibition
presented a macabre and theatrical
repertoire of dualistic ideasgood
and evil, human and animal, life
and death. Messagers work relies
on a strong element of narrative,
combining wit with black humor to
create a spectacle both magical and
fearful.
Growing up in an uneventful town
in northern France, Messager had to
make her own entertainment from
a young age. Her materials are still
accumulated from the everyday
fabrics, soft toys, taxidermy animals,
photographs, and word play, with
many creations morphed from a vari-
ety of sources. Her inspiration, from
Art Brut and Surrealism to mythology
and fairy tales, reveals a preoccupa-
tion with ritual, and both the photo-
graphic work and the installations
explore primal urges and lurking
obsessions living deep within the
human consciousness, evoking traces
of superstitions passed down from
our ancient ancestors.
The representation of the individual
as a collection of contrary charac-
teristics rather than a unified whole
plays a key role in Messagers work.
These dualisms of human nature
surface at a young age, as seen in
children who simultaneously trea-
sure and mutilate their toys. In works
such as |c||e cno c|e, Messagers
use of soft toys draws on this idea
but introduces a distinctly out-
landish dimension. She consistently
creates a potent brew of imagery
that explores self-identity as divided
and multi-faceted, both psychologi-
cally and physically. The body is
always presented as fragmented,
and in |, |c||e, painted secular
stigmata are added to enlarged
black and white photographs, zoom-
ing in on specific details of the
human body.
Suffering and distress are notable
features of Messagers work, as wit-
nessed in the impaled limbs of the
eye-watering |||e, a work that refers
to the French Revolution and the
worldwide atrocities of more recent
times. In /|||:o|c|eo||c|||:o|c|eo,
writhing animal and human body
parts are attached to strings and set
in motion, the motor squealing
hideously to accentuate the painful
movements of the giant marionettes.
The setting is like the workshop of a
mad inventor creating a sub-human
species, who mysteriously leaves his
subjects unfinished in a laboratory
filled with fantastical hybrids. This
scenario can also be applied to |em
cno |, | cno |em, a vast menag-
erie of suspended animal and soft
toy composites.
tc|nc, a three-part installation
originally created for the 2005 Venice
Biennale and one of Messagers most
important works, recalls the story
of Pinocchio. Unfortunately only the
second section, where the puppet
is swallowed by a whale-shark, was
shown here. A billowing red fabric
wave represents a seascape; under-
neath, illuminated aquatic shapes
inflate and deflate. It is in this chap-
ter of the story that the wooden boy
becomes human. The word casino
evokes a place for gamblers, and
Pinocchio famously gambles with life,
his impudence expressed by his
uncontrollable, ever-growing nose. As
a moralistic tale, ||nc::||c is a uni-
versal favorite; as a wider metaphor
for Messagers work, it is extremely
significant. In her version of the story,
Pinocchio, as a puppet, is immortal
Left: Annette Messager, Fables et
Rcits, 1991. Soft toys, books, and
stuffed animals, installation view.
Below: Annette Messager, Casino
(detail), 2005. Red silk, fabric, optical
fiber, fluorescent tubes, rope, fans, and
computer controls, 4 x 16 x 12 meters.
sculpture
B
A
M S a
G E
F
sculpture
B
A
M S a
G E
F
78 Sculpture 29.3
T
O
P
:
J
O
N
A
T
H
A
N
G
R
E
E
T
,
C
O
U
R
T
E
S
Y
M
I
R
I
A
M
S
H
E
L
L
F
I
N
E
A
R
T
,
T
O
R
O
N
T
O
,
O
C
T
O
B
E
R
G
A
L
L
E
R
Y
,
L
O
N
D
O
N
and amoral, traveling haphazardly
through life; as a human, he
becomes broken and fearful, unable
to escape time or human fragility,
caught in the duality and fragmenta-
tion of human nature that Messager
seeks to represent.
|nc tc|e
loWboW
Grard Quenum
October Gallery
At first it was the eyes. The hypnotic
white orbs of Grard Quenums
charred, voodoo-tinged |/ne (/ne|,
2008) drew me into his recent exhibi-
tionand into a multi-layered collec-
tion of powerful sculptural state-
ments about Africa and its relation-
ship with the worlds richer conti-
nents. Quenum, who is based in
Benins capital city of Porto Novo,
is one of a group of street artists
whose work has been building a rep-
utation outside the former French
colony for more than a decade. This
was his first solo show in the U.K.
Clandestins took its title from
Quenums arresting and deeply
affecting 2009 tableau representing
the plight of young Africans trying
to flee a poverty-stricken future.
Balanced precariously on ship-like
sections of time-worn timber, 18
blow-torched plastic dolls are turned
back by a carefully coiffed, uniformed
guardthe only pristine white doll
in the showwho defends a carica-
ture of the European flag.
This uncompromising image intro-
duces us to Quenums languagehis
use of poor discarded materials
from two different worlds, each with
their own historyand to two dis-
tinct strands in his current work. On
the one hand, he produces tableaux,
including the witty and thought-pro-
voking c\|3|coe (3o| c\|, 2009);
on the other, he makes what he calls
|c:|cstriking wooden assem-
blages, each one topped with a dolls
head. These works hark back to tradi-
tional African sculptural forms, espe-
cially those of Benins Yoruba people,
evoking their magical overtones and
ritual significance.
|/ne, a seven-foot-high tower of
blackened wood and metal, appears
strange and rather terrifying. It
seems to hover somewhere between
life and death, evincing a powerful
presence. A blow-torched Caucasian
dolls headpulled from the discard-
ed toys sent in aid parcels as play-
things for the poor little children of
Africaserves as the focus. Above
this, Quenum mounted three
c|nportable altars made by the
ancient people of Benin to represent
the souls of the dead. Feeling that
the work still lacked something, he
left it in a corner for three months
during which time a wasp built its
home in the head, sealing up the eye
sockets with white clay from the
nearby Porto Novo lagoon. This acci-
dent, Quenum says, seemed to me
to perfect the work I had started.
Indeed, part of |/nes eerie power
derives from the wasps contribution.
|e 6c|o|en oe |c |o|| (||||
Hc|:|mcn, 2004) also confronts tra-
dition with modernity, to use
Quenums phrase. A blackened, hair-
less, eyeless dolls head necklaced
with cowry shells crowns an elongat-
ed wood and metal body, its neck
pierced with rusty nails. While the
image is troubling, perhaps playing
with the clichs of horror-film zom-
bies, a carefully placed dash of red
signifies the life force that may yet
rescue the abused creature from its
suffering. Though the tone of c\|
3|coe is lighter, almost cartoon-
like, it compels us to place ourselves
within the everyday realities of
African life: the VW Beetle Barbie
car is crammed with dolls, some
clinging desperately to the sides.
By combining a variety of discarded
objects, each with its own cultural
history, Quenum tells stories in which
imagination and reality evoke each
other. His work derives its power
from his ability to draw on the tradi-
tions of what was West Africas most
prolific artistic civilizationtraditions
that have now largely disappeared.
But with deep irony, he also manages
to turn the unwanted leftovers of
Western society into accusing images
that point back at their source.
ocn |cooe
Wts1tsW 6Att ttt, l ssAtt
Bernie Fink
The Open Museum: Omer
Industrial Park
For several decades, Bernie Fink was
associated with a group of Galilean
sculptors working in the north of
Israel, all of them using basalt and
materials found in nature to produce
constructions suggestive of shrines,
sundials, or archaic agricultural tools.
Although it was known in recent
years that Fink had struck out in an
independent direction, hints of his
pursuits were only intermittent. The
work in his recent show came as
something of a revelation, not only
for its ambitionan attempt to repre-
sent the cosmos, its galaxies, and
celestial bodies in (mostly) stone
but also for the delicacy of Finks
touch, a feature not immediately
associated with his past work.
Above: Grard Quenum, Taxi-Brousse
(Bush Taxi), 2009. Wood, metal, and
plastic dolls, 115 x 58 cm. Right:
Bernie Fink, Galaxy, 2005. Mitzpe
Ramon stone, 220 cm. high.
sculpture
B
A
M S a
G E
F
sculpture
B
A
M S a
G E
F
Fink would be the first to admit
that his cosmic imagery is not based
on scientific fact but inspired by his
fantasies regarding space. Today,
he says, telescopic cameras take pic-
tures of worlds where explosions
occurred millions of years ago. What
we see no longer exists. To suggest
these vanished entities, Fink drilled
holes to various depths and diame-
ters into many of his stones.
His cosmic sculptures were seen
to maximum effect at this open-air
location on the edge of the Negev
desert. A description of the 20 large
and small pieces on display might
begin with Finks renderings of cos-
mic seeds, wrinkles in time, from
which galaxies and planets are
believed to have developed. Using
both basalt and dolomite, he visual-
izes these origins first as egg-shaped
objects cracked open to reveal pitted
gray cores and then as gleaming
white seashells whose surfaces open
into a honeycomb of holes.
Walking past a roughly finished
ball of concrete representing a land-
ed meteor and a UFO in the shape of
a spinning top balanced on a curved
bar, ones eye was eventually held by
two different types of vertical struc-
tures: slabs of granite set vertically in
iron frames and tall stones carved in
irregular shapes and planted in the
ground. Imagination was necessary
to see the raised ridges on uneven
granite surfaces as galactic craters
and mountains or to identify the
tracks splitting certain stones as the
flight paths of cosmic bodies.
A combination of carving, drilling,
and dense texturing endows some
of Finks sculptures with a painterly
character. This is especially true of
the 6c|c\, works in which blocks of
creamy Mitzpe Ramon stone become
the focus of a deep and shallow spi-
ral patterning. Minute basalt spheres
pressed into the surface of one piece
cast shadows that change with the
movement of the sun, thus function-
ing as cosmic landmarks on earth.
/ne|c |e.|ne
1At tt
Ping-Yu Pan
Taipei Fine Arts Museum
Eternal Nature, a solo show of
installations by Taiwanese artist Ping-
Yu Pan, featured works from the last
nine years, including examples from
several different series. Shell imagery
dominated with nine sculptures from
Pans Shell series (200309). Her
soft plush fabric sculptures in muted
pastel hues hung at eye level so view-
ers could peer into their darkened
interiors. Pan works in fiber and
other mixed-media materials such as
wire, rattan, thread, and fabric with
beads and other embellishments.
The work is highly decorative, yet it
escapes branding as fiber art or deco-
rative art and succeeds in establish-
ing itself as monumental sculpture,
surrounding us and altering our per-
ception of space.
Extremely labor-intensive, Pans
work is reminiscent of the room-size
beaded installations created by Liza
Lou. Pans work is equally obsessive
and involves years of time-consuming
sewing and assembling. Begun in
1997, |e|mc|o, the largest and most
impressive piece in the show, con-
tains hundreds of small bits of vari-
ous fabrics, each rich in color, pat-
tern, and texture, sewn together by
hand to create an enveloping work
that stretches to over eight feet in
height and 10 feet in width. Pan told
me that she worked on this piece by
sewing small sections together in her
living room, later adding them to the
growing form in her studio. This
method of construction allowed the
piece to grow organically and gradu-
ally mutate over time; it reveals evi-
dence of changing moods, with dif-
ferent materials, colors, and textures
expressing the potential for continu-
ing growth, as in a living organism.
Some of Pans stuffed fabric vaginal
forms recall Judy Chicagos ||nne|
|c||,. Pans work, however, carries no
strident feminist messages or female
power agenda. In addition to its mat-
ter-of-fact sexuality, it revels in glitter,
frills, softness, and other so- called
feminine characteristics usually
shunned in fine art.
Works from Pans Clothes of
Consciousness series (19992009)
are also obsessive in their attention
to detail and laborious construction.
These works are composed of stained
fabric bits sewn to a chicken-wire
framework, a structure that gives
them a hard, prickly feel. Again, the
forms are organic and irregular,
somewhat awkward even. They invite
close examination and draw the
viewer in by their textural com-
plexity.
3|cco|n t|cc (200709), an
installation that varies in dimen-
sion, consists of fiber-wrapped
swirls of wire with threads of vary-
ing lengths hanging from the spiral-
ing forms. Suspended from the
ceiling, the thin white threads
offered a tactile experience as view-
ers walked into and through them.
Eternal Nature was installed in
a large basement-level gallery that
opens onto an outdoor courtyard
with many large windows. Unfor-
tunately Pans exhibition coincided
with some construction outside, so
the windows were blocked by dark
curtains. With its detail and intricacy,
Pans work would have benefited
from natural light, and the drilling
and other construction noise shat-
tered the quiet mood this exhibition
should have set. The heavily pat-
terned marble floor was another
distraction. Pans work has a quiet
power that needs a clean, pure space
in a calm place.
|cne |n|cm /||en
Above: Ping-Yu Pan, Brooding Chaos, 200709. Fabric, wire, and thread,
installation view. Right: Ping-Yu Pan, Chocolate Seashell II, 2009. Fabric, 62
x 36 x 42 cm.
sculpture
B
A
M S a
G E
F
sculpture
B
A
M S a
G E
F
80 Sculpture 29.3
nees, representing schools from the U.S., Canada,
Korea, Israel, Australia, New Zealand, the
Netherlands, Romania, Pakistan, and the U.K.
Johannah Hutchison, Executive Director of the
ISC, introduced the winners to the exhibition
attendees and described their accomplishment
as evidence of the students talent and dedication
to sculpture. The winners faculty sponsors and
institutions were also praised for their support
and the quality of their programs. Several mem-
bers of the ISCs Board of Directors attended the
ceremony and assisted with the presentation of
certificates to the winners.
The exhibition at Grounds For Sculpture, which
includes work from all 11 winners, was on view
through January 10, 2010. The show is now at
the Salt Lake Art Center in Salt Lake City, Utah,
through May 22. Its final stop is the Blue Star
Contemporary Art Center in San Antonio, Texas,
June 3August 15.
In addition, two of the winners, Luke
Achterberg and Robert Loring, have been selected
to participate in an international artist residency
program in Switzerland, where they will study
with distinguished sculptor Heinz Aeschlimann.
Founded in 1994, the ISCs Student Awards pro-
gram supports and recognizes the work of young
sculptors and encourages their continued commit-
ment to the field of sculpture. This year, the
11 winners and 10 honorable mention recipients
were selected by jurors Willie Cole, an artist from
Mine Hill, New Jersey; Jeanne Jaffe, professor and
chair of fine arts at the University of the Arts in
Philadelphia; and David McFadden, curator at
the Museum of Arts and Design in New York.
The Student Awards program provides the
opportunity for emerging artists to gain visibility
on a national and international level, as well as
valuable competition and exhibition experience.
For more information on the 2009 Student
Awards winners or to learn about the 2010 com-
petition, visit <www.sculpture.org>, e-mail
<studentawards@sculpture.org> or call 609.
689.1051, x305.
isc PEOPLE, PLACES, AND EVENTS
The winners of the 2009 Outstanding Student Achievement in Contemporary
Sculpture competition attended an awards presentation this past October at
Grounds For Sculpture in Hamilton, New Jersey, during the opening of their
group exhibition. The 11 winners were selected from a pool of over 440 nomi-
Above: Matthew Boonstra and his win-
ning piece, Manufacturing Sympathies.
Left: Luke Achterbergs winning piece,
Relative.
Above: Student Award winners with ISC Board
members and staff. Right: Winner Caelie
Winchester and her piece, Totem. Below: Student
Awards Coordinator Lauren Hallden-Abberton pre-
sents a certificate to winner Casey Lynch.
/c| .), |c , C .o:o :o||o|e (|| o33),.3\; | o||||eo mcn|||,, e\:e| |e||oc|, cno /oo|, |, ||e |n|e|nc||cnc| :o||o|e ten|e| |o||c||c| c|||:e :o,, tcnne:||:o| /.e |H, !|| ||cc|, Hc||n|cn, |t
.ooo) |t |em|e||| cno o|:||||cn c|||:e :) |c|||cono |o, o||e 3, |cm|||cn, || o3o:), |/ e| oo)o3):o,: |c\ oo)o3):oo: |mc|| |:_:o||o|ec| /nnoc| mem|e||| ooe c|e | ,:oo,
o|:||||cn cn|,, | ,,, (|c| o|:||||cn c| mem|e||| co||oe ||e |, tcncoc, cno |e\|:c coo | ,.o, |n:|ooe c||mc|| oe||.e|,; |e|m||cn | |eo||eo |c| cn, |e|coo:||cn :o||o|e | nc| |ecn|
||e |c| onc||:||eo mc|e||c| ||ece eno cn /| u||| mc|e||c| |eo|||n |e|o|n 0|n|cn e\|eeo cno .c||o||, c| |n|c|mc||cn |e|e|n c|e ||e |ecn||||||, c| ||e co||c|, nc| ||e |t /o.e||||n |n :o||o|e
| nc| cn |no|:c||cn c| enoc|emen| |, ||e |t, cno ||e |t o|:|c|m ||c|||||, |c| cn, :|c|m mcoe |, co.e|||e| cno |c| |mce |e|coo:eo |, co.e|||e| |e||co|:c| c|ce c|o c| Hc||n|cn, |t, cno coo|
||cnc| mc|||n c|||:e |c|mc|e| eno :|cne c| coo|e |c |n|e|nc||cnc| :o||o|e ten|e|, :) |c|||cono |o, o||e 3, |cm|||cn, || o3o:), |/ | neu|cno o|||||o||cn |, t|6, |n:, .,o H ,,||
||ee|, |eu 'c||, |' :oo:), |/ e| 3oo!,,!3oo |c\ 3,3o,,,.,,
WI NNERS OF THE 2009 OUTSTANDI NG STUDENT ACHI EVEMENT I N CONTEMPORARY SCULPTURE AWARD
___________________
________
sculpture
B
A
M S a
G E
F
sculpture
B
A
M S a
G E
F
___________
___________
_________________
sculpture
B
A
M S a
G E
F
sculpture
B
A
M S a
G E
F
__________
717.290.1303
www. t hi nks cul pt ur e. com
For estimates and project inquiries contact Tracy at execassist@thinksculpture.com
Tradi ng hours: 8:00 to 4:30 pm
a.r.t. research enterprises
T H E F I N E A R T F O U N D R Y
Carol Brown Goldberg at
The Suzanne H. Arnold Gallery
Lebanon Valley College
Total Project Management Desi gn Servi ces
Rapi d Prototypi ng Mol d Maki ng Casti ng
Fabri cati on Professi onal Pai nt Servi ces
____________________________
sculpture
B
A
M S a
G E
F
sculpture
B
A
M S a
G E
F

Sculpture 2010

Uploaded by

Document Information

Copyright

Available Formats

Share this document

Share or Embed Document

Sharing Options

Did you find this document useful?

Is this content inappropriate?

Copyright:

Available Formats

Sculpture 2010

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

sculpture

New Membership Benefits at a Glance

You might also like