Sculpture 2013 06

sculpture
June 2013
Vol. 32 No. 5
A publication of the
International Sculpture Center
www.sculpture.org
Meeson Pae Yang
Doris Salcedo
Nari Ward
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THE WORLDS NEWSSTAND
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One of the many exciting things happening at the International Sculpture
Center is the growing interest in chapter groups. This is a burgeoning
source of strength for the ISC, providing a network through which artists
and art enthusiasts can engage and collaborate at a regional level.
Chicago Sculpture International (CSI) and Texas Sculpture Group (TSG)
are current ISC chapter groups, and there is interest in new chapters
around the world. CSI promotes a supportive environment for sculp-
ture and sculptors in the Chicago area through exhibitions and public
forums. The Chicago Sculpture International Outdoor Exhibition,
shown in the citys lakefront parks, has been a highlight of the groups
achievements.
TSG supports and promotes sculptors working in Texas through net-
working, discussions, a Web presence, publications, and exhibitions.
Among the many exhibitions featuring works by TSG members is Art in
the Garden 2013 hosted by the San Antonio Botanical Garden and Blue
Star Contemporary Art Museum. This year-long event features sculptures
by members of TSG and CSI.
Both ISC chapter groups contribute in numerous ways to the expansion
and awareness of contemporary sculpture in their geographic areas.
I encourage you to read more about these groups on page 80 of this
issue.
Finally, if you are still planning a summer vacation, I would like to
suggest visiting one of the many wonderful sculpture parks or gardens
in the U.S. and around the world. Sculpture parks and gardens have
become increasingly popular destinations for art and nature lovers alike.
Please check out the must-see parks and gardens listed in this issue.
These internationally acclaimed venues, where stunning sculptures
rise from the ground like the impressive trees that surround them, are
some of the best places to experience the art of nature and the art
of culture merging together. In addition, the ISC Sculpture Parks and
Gardens Destination Directory on the ISC Web site <www.sculpture.
org> makes it easy to search for parks and gardens all over the world
and find all the information you need.
Have a wonderful summer discovering the world of sculpture.
Marc LeBaron
Chairman, ISC Board of Trustees
From the Chairman
4 Sculpture 32.5
ISC Board of Trustees
Chairman: Marc LeBaron, Lincoln, NE
Chakaia Booker, New York, NY
Robert Edwards, Naples, FL
Jeff Fleming, Des Moines, IA
Ralfonso Gschwend, Switzerland
Carla Hanzal, Charlotte, NC
Paul Hubbard, Philadelphia, PA
Ree Kaneko, Omaha, NE
Gertrud Kohler-Aeschlimann, Switzerland
Mark Lyman, Sawyer, MI
Creighton Michael, Mt. Kisco, NY
Deedee Morrison, Birmingham, AL
Prescott Muir, Salt Lake City, UT
George W. Neubert, Brownville, NE
Andrew Rogers, Australia
F. Douglass Schatz, Potsdam, NY
Boaz Vaadia, New York, NY
Philipp von Matt, Germany
Chairmen Emeriti: Robert Duncan, Lincoln, NE
John Henry, Chattanooga, TN
Peter Hobart, Italy
Josh Kanter, Salt Lake City, UT
Robert Vogele, Hinsdale, IL
Founder: Elden Tefft, Lawrence, KS
Lifetime Achievement in
Contemporary Sculpture Recipients
Magdalena Abakanowicz
Fletcher Benton
Fernando Botero
Louise Bourgeois
Anthony Caro
Elizabeth Catlett
John Chamberlain
Eduardo Chillida
Christo & Jeanne-Claude
Mark di Suvero
Richard Hunt
Phillip King
William King
Manuel Neri
Claes Oldenburg & Coosje van Bruggen
Nam June Paik
Arnaldo Pomodoro
Gi Pomodoro
Robert Rauschenberg
George Rickey
George Segal
Kenneth Snelson
Frank Stella
William Tucker
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Departments
14 Itinerary
18 Commissions
20 Forum: Laumeier Sculpture Park and the
Archaeology of Place
by Daniel McGrath
80 ISC News
Reviews
73 Richmond: Arlene Shechet
74 Denver: Katie Caron
75 Washington, DC: 40 under 40: Craft Futures
76 New York: Hijo Nam
77 Toronto: Evan Penny
77 Tel Aviv: Guy Zagursky
78 Aichi Prefecture, Japan: Noe Aoki
79 Auckland, New Zealand: Summer of Sculpture
On the Cover: Meeson Pae Yang, Geodes
(detail), 2010. Silicone, cement, reflections,
mirrored Plexiglas, and mylar, 10 x 35 x 6 ft.
Photo: Gene Ogami, courtesy the artist.
Features
24 Myths of Fantastical Life: A Conversation with Meeson Pae Yang by Michal Amy
32 The Life Through Time and Space: A Conversation with Tatsuo Miyajima by Karlyn De Jongh
38 Paradise Lost: A Conversation with Anna Eyjlfsdttir by Robert Preece
44 Life Might Prevail: Doris Salcedos Plegaria Muda by Laura Tansini
50 Serendipity and Faith: A Conversation with Nari Ward by Jan Garden Castro
50
sculpture
June 2013
Vol. 32 No. 5
A publication of the
International Sculpture Center
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Sculpture June 2013 5
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S CUL PT URE MAGAZ I NE
Editor Glenn Harper
Managing Editor Twylene Moyer
Editorial Assistants Elena Goukassian, Amanda Hickok
Design Eileen Schramm visual communication
Advertising Sales Manager Brenden OHanlon
Contributing Editors Maria Carolina Baulo (Buenos
Aires), Roger Boyce (Christchurch), Susan Canning (New
York), Marty Carlock (Boston), Jan Garden Castro (New
York), Collette Chattopadhyay (Los Angeles), Ina Cole
(London), Ana Finel Honigman (Berlin), John K. Grande
(Montreal), Kay Itoi (Tokyo), Matthew Kangas (Seattle),
Zoe Kosmidou (Athens), Angela Levine (Tel Aviv), Brian
McAvera (Belfast), Robert C. Morgan (New York), Robert
Preece (Rotterdam), Brooke Kamin Rapaport (New
York), Ken Scarlett (Melbourne), Peter Selz (Berkeley),
Sarah Tanguy (Washington), Laura Tansini (Rome)
Each issue of Sculpture is indexed in The Art Index and
the Bibliography of the History of Art (BHA).
isc
Benefactors Circle ($100,000+)
Atlantic Foundation
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I NT E RNAT I ONAL SCUL PT URE CE NT E R CONT E MPORARY SCUL PT URE CI RCL E
The International Sculpture Center is a 501(c)3 nonprofit organization
that provides programming and services supported by contributions, grants,
sponsorships, and memberships.
The ISC Board of Trustees gratefully acknowledges the generosity of our
members and donors in our Contemporary Sculpture Circle: those who have
contributed $350 and above.
I NT E RNAT I ONAL S CUL PT URE CE NT E R
Executive Director Johannah Hutchison
Office Manager Denise Jester
Executive Assistant Alyssa Brubaker
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ISC Headquarters
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Major Donors ($50,00099,999)
Anonymous Foundation
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Nadine Witkin, Estate of Isaac Witkin
Mary & John Young
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About the ISC
The International Sculpture Center is a member-supported, nonprofit organization
founded in 1960 to champion the creation and understanding of sculpture and
its unique and vital contribution to society. The mission of the ISC is to expand
public understanding and appreciation of sculpture internationally, demonstrate
the power of sculpture to educate and effect social change, engage artists and
arts professionals in a dialogue to advance the art form, and promote a support-
ive environment for sculpture and sculptors. The ISC values: our constituents
Sculptors, Institutions, and Patrons; dialogueas the catalyst to innovation and
understanding; educationas fundamental to personal, professional, and soci-
etal growth; and communityas a place for encouragement and opportunity.
Membership
ISC membership includes subscriptions to Sculpture and Insider; access to
International Sculpture Conferences; free registration in Portfolio, the ISCs
on-line sculpture registry; and discounts on publications, supplies, and services.
International Sculpture Conferences
The ISCs International Sculpture Conferences gather sculpture enthusiasts
from all over the world to network and dialogue about technical, aesthetic,
and professional issues.
Sculpture Magazine
Published 10 times per year, Sculpture is dedicated to all forms of contemporary
sculpture. The members edition includes the Insider newsletter, which contains
timely information on professional opportunities for sculptors, as well as a list
of recent public art commissions and announcements of members accomplish-
ments.
www.sculpture.org
The ISCs award-winning Web site <www.sculpture.org> is the most comprehensive
resource for information on sculpture. It features Portfolio, an on-line slide
registry and referral system providing detailed information about artists and their
work to buyers and exhibitors; the Sculpture Parks and Gardens Directory, with
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.
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The ISCs publications
are supported in part
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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.
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14 Sculpture 32.5
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Ballroom Marfa
|c||c, e\c
Rashid Johnson
||co| |o|, ,, .o:,
Johnsons installations, sculptures,
photographs, and videos offer deep
meditations on the phenomena that
shape African American culture
while questioning any uniformity
in the black experience. Wading
through dense thickets of reference
and information, he blends personal
and historically loaded objects
(books, album covers, and shea
butter) into complicated aggregates
that defy taxonomy and confound
collective identity. Beginning with
the question, What would happen
if Sun Ra, George Washington Carver,
and Robert Smithson started a
community together in the desert?
New Growth playfully intertwines
cosmology, escapism, and irrigation
in order to redraw the past, present,
and future of the desert around
Marfa. Newly commissioned works
include a large-scale sculpture and
videoboth produced in situ
as well as paintings, works in wood,
and island-like installations.
Tel: 432.729.3600
Web site
<www.ballroommarfa.org>
Blaffer Gallery, University of
Houston
|co|cn
Andy Coolquitt
||co| /oo| .!, .o:,
Scavenging the streets for remnants
of human activity, Coolquitt trans-
forms debris such as metal tubing,
plastic lighters, empty bottles,
drinking straws, and paper bags
into humble monuments to transient
existences and temporary encounters
in public space. Though his materials
are drawn from the exterior world,
they also express an interior life that
humanizes homelessness. Indivi-
dual sculptures and groupings imply
a sense of domesticity, whether
through association or function
providing light, warmth, and other
physical comforts. For his first solo
museum exhibition, Coolquitt has
recombined 60 discrete sculptures
and tableaux into a new installation
that reflects on the gallery as a codi-
fied place of interaction for people
and artworks. The show also includes
a selection of somebody-mades
and in-betweens, works that strad-
dle the line between autonomous
sculptures and unaltered appropria-
tions. These quasi-artworks further
complicate the relationship
between creation and reception,
artist and audience, blurring the
boundaries of art and life.
Tel: 713.743.2255
Web site
<www.class.uh.edu/blaffer>
Brooklyn Museum
3|cc||,n
Michael Ballou
||co| |o|, ,, .o:,
For the eighth installment of the
Raw/Cooked series, Ballou, a
Williamsburg-based multimedia
artist whose work incorporates sculp-
ture, performance, and collaboration,
has created three interconnected
installations exploring the behavior
and inner lives of animals. |c 'ec|,
a monumental construction of more
than 30 sculptures modeled on ani-
mals of his acquaintance, occupies
the Decorative Arts galleries. 6c6c
enlivens the fifth-floor elevator lobby
with a mobile puppet suspended
from the ceiling, ambient music, and
the play of projected light and shad-
ows. And |en:|| |c|oe| responds to
the Luce Visible Storage/Study Cen-
ter. Drawn to the Honoe||cmme|-
quality of this treasure house, Ballou
added several of his own ceramic
sculptures, accompanied by six fic-
tional contributions by authors
Stephanie Barber, David Brody, James
Hannaham, Kurt Hoffman, Helen
Phillips, and Matthew Sharpe (all
accessible by QR code).
Tel: 718.638.5000
Web site
<www.brooklynmuseum.org>
itinerary
Left: Michael Ballou, detail of work
in progress. Above: Rashid Johnson,
installation view of New Growth.
Right: Andy Coolquitt, chair w/
paintings.
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Frederik Meijer Gardens and
Sculpture Park
6|cno |c|o
Zhang Huan
||co| /oo| .,, .o:,
Zhang Huan began his career with
controversial performances that
tested his physical endurance and
pushed the limits of acceptability in
post-Tiananmen China. After moving
to New York in 1998, he staged
photographs as performances and
enacted large-scale events, often
involving scores of volunteers.
Several years ago, his work took
another turn when he established
a studio in a former Shanghai gar-
ment factory and began to produce
monumental sculptures. These sug-
gestive and forceful works, made
from bronze, incense ash, and found
materials from the Chinese country-
side, reflect on the historical legacy
of Buddhism and its place in the
modern world. Looking East, Facing
West follows his personal journey
through photographic and sculptural
works from the last 15 years.
Tel: 888.957.1580
Web site
<www.meijergardens.org>
Gemeentemuseum
|e |coe
Yes Naturally
||co| /oo| :o, .o:,
Yes Naturally raises the question
of what is natural. Are human beings
the only ones with a say, or do ani-
mals, plants, and inanimate objects
also have a role to play? From
clichd images of romantic land-
scapes to the inescapable facts
of environmental degradation, this
large-scale exhibition offers a tour
of the natural world from a variety of
unusual perspectives. Works by more
than 80 artists, including Francis Als,
Jimmie Durham, Olafur Eliasson,
Fischli & Weiss, Natalie Jeremijenko,
Marjetica Potrc, Atelier van Lieshout,
Zeger Reyers, Superflex, and Ai
Weiwei, establish surprising partner-
ships of humanity, nature, and tech-
nology. The results are both liberat-
ing and hilarious: you can design
your own pet and harvest the city;
your smartphone is your memory,
Facebook your habitat, and the
Internet the new biotope. In keeping
with its extra-human spirit, Yes
Naturally moves beyond the walls
of culture, spreading outdoors to the
museum grounds, the dune forest,
and into the city, with urban wildlife
safaris, performances, workshops,
and public programs, supplemented
by social media and on-line forums.
Tel: + 31 (0) 70 3381111
Web site
<www.gemeentemuseum.nl>
Kunstmuseum Wolfsburg
Hc|||o|, 6e|mcn,
Christian Boltanski
||co| |o|, .:, .o:,
Few artists dance with death like
Boltanski. Though he is best known
for emotionally intense installations
that conjure the tragedy of World
War II concentration camps, his true
interest lies in the fact of dying. In
his recent workfollowing a bizarre
bet with MONA founder David
Walshthe universal becomes per-
sonal, and thematic interest
becomes imbedded in his own skin,
tied to his own life expectancy.
Transgressing this last taboo means
nothing to an artist who follows the
example of Lucretius and refuses
to fear or cheat his way out of lifes
inevitable outcome: It is not
melancholic, but felicitous when you
accept death. It makes every
moment great, more important, and
happier. This show of recent work
connecting life and death focuses
on a new, kinetic interpretation of
the |en:|||:| (|omcn; archive. In
||||(;, transparent renderings of
the archival subjects (some living;
some deceased) drift on air currents,
coming briefly into focus, overlap-
ping, then fading again in homage
to our two-part finale in which physi-
cal ending is followed by immaterial
disappearancean equally eternal
erasure of image and memory.
Tel: + 49 (0) 5361 2669 0
Web site
<www.kunstmuseum-wolfsburg.de>
Left: Keith Edmier and Victoria Regia,
First Night Bloom, from Yes Nat-
urally. Right: Zhang Huan, Long
Island Buddha. Bottom right:
Christian Boltanski, Last second.
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16 Sculpture 32.4
Kunstverein Mnchen
|on|:|
Rebecca Warren
||co| |one :o, .o:,
Ranging from the amorphous to the
recognizable, Warrens sculptures
have opened brash new possibilities
for form, material, and subject
matter. Taking one of the most tra-
ditional subjects in art historythe
female nudeshe subverts inherited,
male-defined clichs, while simul-
taneously questioning the formal
aspects of sculpturewhat it
should be and what it should look
like. The key to her inspired trans-
gressions, which result in rough,
distorted, unfinished or damaged-
looking sculptures, lies in the
malleability and freedom of clay. Left
unfired, spontaneous gestures and
improvised formal risk-taking con-
tinue to breathe life into her awk-
ward compositions; not yet resolved,
still capable of change, these works
maintain the freshness of sketches,
multiplying into dynamic groups
that blend shrewdly intelligent art
historical and social insight with an
emotional appeal that resonates on
a much more basic level.
Tel: + 49 (0) 89-221 152
Web site
<www.kunstverein-muenchen.de>
Muse du Quai Branly
|c||
The Philippines: Archipelago of
Exchange
||co| |o|, :!, .o:,
The Quai Branlys mottowhere
cultures converseexpresses
a sentiment that dates back to its
venerable antecedents, the Muse
de lHomme and Muse des Arts
Africains et Ocaniens. Building on
the idea that unexpected artistic
directions emerge when diverse peo-
ples cross paths, it brings together
(non-Western) artifacts from across
time and space and sets them into
motion in a contemporary context.
Though not without its critics, such
a commitment to exchange is more
pressing than ever in todays increas-
ingly interdependent and divided
world. Archipelago of Exchange
focuses on one particularly rich and
relatively obscure area of cross-fer-
tilizationthe strategically located
islands of the Philippines. More
than 300 pre-colonial workssculp-
ture, pottery, textiles, and personal
ornamentsreveal a rich and open
visual culture that extended from
prehistoric times, through succes-
sive waves of Austronesian peoples
bringing Malay, Indian, Indonesian,
Arab, and Chinese influences, to the
arrival of Magellan in 1521. Though
reminiscent of stylistically pure
works from larger centers, these
hybrid productions break with canon-
ical types to become something
entirely their own.
Tel: + 33 (0) 1 56 61 70 00
Web site
<www.quaibranly.fr>
Museum of Contemporary Art
t||:cc
Amalia Pica
||co| /oo| ::, .o:,
Using sculpture, film, and installa-
tion, Pica explores the goals of
enunciation and the performative
nature of thought. She has a partic-
ular fascination with communica-
tion breakdown: for instance, works
based on deaf monologues and
halting conversations talk about
inadequacies in our ability to make
contacta point taken to absurd
heights in a semaphore performance
in which she spells out babble,
blabber, and yada yada yada. Her
often participatory projects directly
intervene in public life, staging and
condensing moments of cultural
intimacy and civic participation. This
show, which includes recent perfor-
mance, sculptural, and film works,
also features the new nomadic
sculpture | cm cue| c| |cm|e|, c
| cm |n cue| c| |cm|e|, which
Chicago-area residents may borrow
and take care of for a week before
returning.
Tel: 312.280.2660
Web site <www.mcachicago.org>
Nasher Sculpture Center
|c||c
Nathan Mabry
||co| |o|, ,, .o:,
Inspired by everything from archae-
ology and ethnology to Dada, Sur-
realism, and icons of Modernism,
Mabry crashes different aesthetics
together to form bizarre, sometimes
unsettling, conflations that stymie
criticality. When Roman sculpture
(Romulus and Remus with the she-
Left: Ritual sculpture, from The
Philippines. Above: Rebecca Warren,
Croccioni. Top right: Amalia Pica,
Stabile (with confetti).
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itinerary
Sculpture 2013 17
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I
Nwolf) collides with African basketry
and contemporary junk la
Rauschenberg, anything is possible:
meaning and value become unstable,
and interpretation murky. Sincere
or cynical, profoundly deep or
laughingly superficial, these mash-
ups nevertheless possess the power
to move as well as confound. By
turns poignant, humorous, critical,
and admiring, they capture the ambi-
valent, constantly changing nature
of our relationship to the cultural
past. Mabrys outdoor Sightings
installation features a new work
based on an ancient Jalisco figure
in the Nasher Collection, in addition
to Proce PP ss Art (B-E-A EE -G-G-R-E-S-S-I-V-E VV ) E ,
a monstrous metamorphosis of
Rodins Burghers of Calais.
Tel: 214.242.5100
Web site
<www.nashersculpturecenter.org>
New Museum
New York rr
Center for Historical Reenactments
Thr TT ou rr gh July ll 17, 77 2013
CHR, an independent Johannesburg-
based group of artists, curators,
and writers, was founded in 2010
in response to rapid, and unequal,
development in South Africa. Taking
a unique approach to social prob-
lems, its projects focused on historic
events and sites, particularly from
the apartheid era, to investigate
historical context and explore how
defunct ideologies maintain their
grip on social systems. For After-
after Tears, CHR members Donna
Kukama, Gabi Ngcobo, and Kemang
Wa Lehulere have developed a mul-
tifaceted exhibition that covers the
life of the group and its operational
strategies, most notably the deci-
sion to commit an institutional
death in 2012 in order to forestall
inevitable devolution from experi-
mental platform to formal organiza-
tion. The gallery presentation eluci-
dates CHRs working philosophy of
subversion, mediation, and transver-
sal processes, while perfo ff rmances
and public programs propose future
activitiesall geared toward open-
ing up discussions about the art
system, institutional mechanisms,
and the complexity of relationships
within power systems.
Tel: 212.219.1222
Web site <www.newmuseum.org>
Smithsonian American Art
Museum
Wa WW shington, DC
Nam June Paik
Thro rr ugh August 11, 2013
Video artist, performer, composer,
and new media sculpture visionary,
Paik was one of the most innovative
artists of the 20th century, counter-
ing doomsday Future Shock pre-
monitions with witty and humanized
renderings of technology. More
than 40 years ago, he saw the sig-
nificance (and dangers) of TV and
rapid communication and devoted
the rest of his career to proving that
technology can do more than lull
and enslave. A student of commer-
cial and ideological forces, he
upended appropriated imagery (and
its delivery devices), turning propa-
gandistic pablum into a call for
thinking resistance. In the process,
he transformed the video image
into a tool capable of redefining the
parameters of sculpture and instal-
lation. This survey, yy the first in a
series of exhibitions drawn from the
artists archive (acquired by SAAM
in 2009), features more than 65
works, including key loans from Ger-
many, where Paik was an influential
member of Fluxus, and more than
140 items from his archive. Together,
these selections offer ff an unprece-
dented glimpse into his creative
methodan appropriate approach
to an innovator who never mystified
his operations.
Tel: 202.633.7970
Web site
<www.americanart.si.edu>
Above: Center for Historical Reenact-
ments, Na Ku Randza. Top right:
Selected objects from the Nam June
Paik archive. Right: Nathan Mabry,
Process Art (B-E- (( A-G-G-R - -E-S-S -- -I-V-E).
June
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HkMAnn |osr HAck
Bread Army
Paris
For several years now, Hermann Josef Hack has been working in
an unusual mediumbread. Inspired by the seasonal appearance
of Weckmnner (traditional German sweetbread people) in bakeries
over the winter holidays, the artist-activist decided to give these
otherwise benign childrens treats a political purpose. Hack started
organizing Weckmnner demonstrations on the streets of Cologne,
with the little bread people holding up signs in German reading,
Art collector, where did all your money come from? and Art =
Capital, Artist = Capitalist. The project has grown over the years
to include bread bombs strapped to trees and telephone poles and
bread tanks roaming the streets. In one instance, Hack strapped
baguettes to himself under a trench coat, like a suicide bread
bomber, and stood in a public square. The Bread Armys most
recent assault, in Paris last February, started with tanks parachuting
into the city before making their way to the Eiffel Tower, Arc
de Triomphe, and Centre Pompidou, while bread bombs appeared
menacingly on trees. Despite its successful invasion, the Bread
Army ultimately lost the battle, defeated by Parisian pigeons.
Hack uses humor very intelligently: I find humor and games
important in order to gain peoples sympathy, he explains.
People in a good mood are much more likely to connect with the
artwork. Hacks public interventions have addressed a wide variety
of issues, from global warming to the ridiculousness of the art
world. With Bread Army, the subject at stake was food justice.
Hack likes to point out the absurdly tragic irony of a world in
which some people die of hunger while others suffer from obesity.
He equates his use of breadits stale by the time he gets to it
to Christian symbolism, sharing, and charity. As a form of suste-
nance, his bread sculptures attract not only pigeons, but also
homeless people. The artist says that this is all part of the project.
18 Sculpture 32.5
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commissions commissions
Left: Hermann Josef Hack, Bread Army, 2013. Bread and glazed ceramic, 2
views of project in Paris. Above: Octavi Serra, Mateu Targa, Daniel Llugany,
and Pau Garcia, Hands, 2013. Chalk, 30 x 12 x 15 cm. each. 3 views of project
in Barcelona.
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Like his old teacher Joseph Beuys, Hack seeks to reclaim public
space, both physically and politically. The intention of his work?
Only art can save us now.
0ctAvt SkkA, MAtu 1AkoA, 0Antt ltuoAnv, Anu
PAu 6AkctA
Hands
Barcelona
Spain hasnt been doing well lately. After taking a hard hit from the
financial crisis, news items devoted to increased unemployment
(now over 50 percent for young people and 25 percent over all),
evictions, emigration, and suicides have become all too familiar. In
March, following the banking debacle in Cyprus that led to nation-
wide bank runs and empty ATMs, a new Spanish mattress com-
pany was announcedone that made mattresses with built-in
strongboxes.
Spanish artists have taken this mayhem as both inspiration and a
call to arms. In Barcelona last February, Octavi Serra, Mateu Targa,
Daniel Llugany, and Pau Garcia joined together to cast chalk hands
and install them throughout the old city center. Scattered along the
famed Passeig de Grcia, the Plaa de Catalunya, and other popular
areas, the hands hold nooses above bank doors, dig for change in
payphones, and try to break into closed shop shutters with crow-
bars. The deliberate placement of Hands in the most touristed
areasincluding in front of Gaud buildingsunderscore the
artists intention to engage an international audience. In one case,
a hand juts out of a wall, palm up and begging for alms, with a
cardboard sign reading Help Spain (in English) underneath.
As passersby notice the hands, taking pictures of them on their
phones, Barcelonans and tourists alike are playfully reminded
of the regions ailing economy.
The artists tongue-in-cheek humor extends to their own self-
characterization. All of them work in the field of visual arts, they
write on the project Web site, and love the way actual and past
politicians are doing their job. In a country where unemployment
has reached levels last seen under Francos military dictatorship
in the 1940s, Hands serves as a darkly humorous warning of the
dangers faced by individuals left to navigate a dire situation on
their own.
kArAt lozAnoHMMk
Open Air
Philadelphia
For a few weeks last fall, Philadelphias iconic Benjamin Franklin
Parkway was transformed into a laser lightshow. From City Hall
to the Philadelphia Art Museum, 24 searchlights danced in the sky
every night to the tune of recorded messages from local residents.
Over the course of Rafael Lozano-Hemmers Open Air project, more
than 5,000 people recorded 30-second messages, including mar-
riage proposals, amateur DJ mixes, declarations of love and politics,
and lots of poems. Of course, no laser show would be complete
without renditions of Led Zeppelin and Journey songs, but the
most striking voice messages came from children talking about
their daily lives; in one extremely sad case, a young girl apologized
to her parents for causing their divorce. A techie at heart, Lozano-
Hemmer designed this intricate project to include not only voice
messages and lasers, but also smartphone apps and a Web site,
where anyone could record messages, listen to others record-
ings, and view live, recorded, or Google Earth renditions of how
these were transcribed by the lasers.
Open Air served as a new portal for free speech in the city where
the Constitution was signed. Yet as much as the project celebrates
free speech, it also raises questions about privacy in the digital age.
After all, searchlights and the Internet both have roots in military
surveillance. On the one hand, I give the seduction of participa-
tion, the idea that you are in the limelight, Lozano-Hemmer told
Phawker in an interview last October, but there is also a violent
aspect in all of my projects. And that comes in because the desire
to participate and to have interactivity cannot be divorced from
the desire to police people and to control them. For the record,
Lozano-Hemmer refused to censor any recorded messages.
Elena Goukassian
Rafael Lozano-Hemmer, Open Air, 2012. Xenon 10kW robotic searchlights,
Turbulent Heap content manager, webcams, Linux servers, GPS, Google Earth
3D DMX interface, iPhones, custom-software, and cloud computing and stor-
age, interactive area: 1 mile. 2 views of project in Philadelphia.
Juries are convened each month to select works for Commissions. Information on recently completed commissions, along with high-resolution
digital images (300 dpi at 4 x 5 in. minimum), should be sent to: Commissions, Sculpture, 1633 Connecticut Avenue NW, 4th Floor, Washington,
DC 20009. E-mail <elena@sculpture.org>.
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Laumeier Sculpture Park in St.
Louis, perhaps the American
Midwests premiere sculpture
park, is taking on a new iden-
tity, trading the familiar and
accessible for the experimental
and engaged. Curators there
have recently re-energized the
exhibition program in a bold
attempt to recontextualize pub-
lic sculpture, organizing two
shows (so far) under the banner
archaeology of place. Explor-
ing life both far afield and close
to home, Camp Out and
Living Proposal introduced
new sculptural practices into
the park while providing active
platforms for contemplation
and learning.
The catalogue for Camp Out:
Finding Home in an Unstable
World, a 2012 group exhibi-
tion, declared a far-ranging
interest in housing conditions
from earthquake ravaged Haiti
to flooded Pakistan, then
turned its attention to urban
blight in America, made worse
by economic meltdown. Thats
a lot of ground to cover for
any show, and differences in
approach and opinion were
inevitable. Seen together, the
selected sculptures manifested
an intergenerational duel of
methodologies in which aes-
thetic conflict reflected wider
political crises.
The contrast between Dr
Wapenaars Treetent (2005),
a large teardrop-shaped shelter
strapped to a tree 12 feet off
the ground, and Oliver Bishop-
Youngs High Rise (2012), a
dumpster filled with a city made
of neatly arranged, salvaged
shelves and equally neat stacks
of chopped branches, is telling.
Treetent (designed well before
the 2008 stock market crash)
is a luxury tent-cum-sculpture.
The 600-pound pod, fabricated
from heavy weatherized can-
vas wrapped around a steel
armature, does not look cheap.
The cozy interior boasts pol-
ished floorboards, and plastic
windows offer views to the
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Oliver Bishop-Young, High Rise, 2012.
Construction dumpster and mixed
media, dimensions variable. From
Camp Out.
Laumeier Sculpture Park and the Archaeology of Place
by Daniel McGrath
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outside. Treetent was originally
designed for the Road Alert
Group, tree-hugger activists
who chain themselves to trees,
but campground owners quick-
ly adopted it and turned it into
a commercial success. The
work typifies a comfortable
middle class able to afford acts
of ecological protest and camp-
ing holidays that have nothing
to do with bare survival.
Bishop-Youngs High Rise, on
the other hand, consists of a
monumental pile of detritus
worthy of Arte Povera.
Designed to house critters, the
converted dumpster looks like
the product of a union between
Noahs Ark and a beached
Carnival cruise ship. It arrests
and startles, while engaging
in a good-humored joke at the
expense of permanent monu-
ments. High Rise will rot over
time, but that disintegration
wont prevent it from serving
as an insulated haven for hiber-
nating animals during St.
Louiss harsh winters (the work
remains on view). Bishop-
Youngs other works include
dumpsters as ping-pong tables
and swimming pools, but this
effort moves beyond design
gimmicks into a formal dia-
logue with the Judds and
LeWitts that dot Laumeiers
grounds. By raising ontological
questions about sculpture in a
perilous time of budget cuts for
the arts, this anti-monument
echoes Shelleys Ozymandias:
Look on my works, ye Mighty,
and despair!
This divergence of approach,
as evident in the catalogue as it
was in the show itself, set an
established generation of artists
(with stable careers, tenure, and
mortgages) against a group of
relative unknowns whose cir-
cumstances probably necessi-
tate a good bit of roughing it.
Emily Speeds hilarious Inhabi-
tant (St. Louis) (2012), an
impractical yet wearable suit
in the shape of a city, suggests
the involuntary nomadism and
imploded futures that more for-
tunate people can contemplate
from a safe distance. There was
a notable dichotomy between
cynical youth and contented
good intentions. Kim Yasudas
Hunt and Gather (2012), for
instance, an allotment farm that
provided Laumeier with herbs,
vegetables, and a small supply
of free-range eggs laid in a spe-
cially built coop, followed the
fashion for boutique organic
food.
The intergenerational instabil-
ity was best illustrated by the
disconnect between Le Bcher
(The Burning Stake, 2010),
by the up-and-coming collective
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Above: Dr Wapenaar, Treetent,
2005. Canvas, wood, and powder-
coated steel, dimensions variable.
Right: BGL, Le Bcher, 2010. Plexi-
glas and acrylic, 96 x 108 x 72 in.
Both works from Camp Out.
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BGL (Montreal-based Jasmin
Bilodeau, Sbastien Gigure,
and Nicolas Laverdire) and
Michael Rakowitzs paraSITE
(2012). Le Bcher consists of an
oversized faux fire made from
cut sheets of Plexiglas stacked
in luminous layers and exhib-
ited in an interior gallery.
The visual warmth was nothing
more than a cold illusion, a fire
without heat, bleak without
expecting sympathy. Just out-
side, paraSITE billowed in the
warm exhaust of an air condi-
tioner. A DIY tent made from
taped-together shopping bags,
complete with instructions,
it inflated like a balloon in the
heated air. Was this inflatable
a cri de coeur about homeless-
ness, or was it supposed to be
a sustainable solution intended
for actual use? During the exhi-
bition, children repeatedly
stomped on paraSITE, tearing
it to shreds. Their vandalism
revealed the impractical nature
of such a structurepresum-
ably Rakowitz is aware of the
problem and is satisfied with
optimistic intent.
Another exhibition, Juan
Chvezs Living Proposal:
Pruitt-Igoe Bee Sanctuary,
moved the politics of shelter
even closer to home. Photo-
graphs documenting Neolithic
cave paintings of beekeepers,
secondhand bee suits, Super 8
films of overgrown shrubs,
reclaimed hives, and giant tele-
graph poles joined together in a
multidisciplinary investigation
into the history and legacy
of St. Louis Pruitt-Igoe towers.
Designed by Minoru Yamasaki
(architect of the World Trade
Center) and completed in 1956,
the Pruitt-Igoe housing project
became notorious for its
poverty, crime, and segregation.
When the 33 buildings were
finally demolished, they were
laid to rest with Charles
Jenckss widely quoted epitaph:
Modern Architecture died
in St. Louis, Missouri, on July
15th, 1972 at 3:32 pm or there-
abouts. The site was then
abandoned and left as a bram-
ble patch wasteland, every
attempt at planning permission
contested by hostile real estate
developers. A new IKEA or a
maximum-security prison? Not
so fast. Chvez would have the
land reserved for the honeybees
that he discovered living there
in thriving colonies, promising
a ready supply of St. Louis-
made honey.
Untitled (Sacred Real Estate)
(2012), the largest work in
Living Proposal, resurrected
the ghost of this hopeless era
in civic values. Assembled from
14 recycled lampposts arranged
in a 1:1 scale footprint of a sin-
gle tower block, Untitled also
replicated the form of a Native
American henge, specifically
the Mississippian Woodhenge
in Cahokia, Illinois. The allu-
sion coyly jabs at a more recent-
ly collapsed society on the St.
Louis side of the Mississippi
Jim Crow segregation and
the subsequently botched civil-
rights-era desegregation.
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Above: Emily Speed, Inhabitant (St.
Louis), 2012. Cardboard, electrical
tape, and acrylic, dimensions vari-
able. From Camp Out. Right: Juan
William Chvez, Untitled (Sacred
Real Estate), 2012. 14 lampposts,
36 x 134 ft.
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While Pruitt-Igoes calamitous
racial, political, and demo-
graphic troubles spawned a vast
amount of ponderous scholar-
ship and attracted much do-
gooder attention, Chavezs pro-
ject proved to be a revelation.
Untitleds juxtaposition of mod-
ern and prehistoric construction
came to life when seen on
Laumeiers great field in front
of Alexander Libermans red
behemoth The Way (1980). The
interplay of Chvezs mottled
wood and Libermans salvaged
steel bookended the successes
and failures that have charac-
terized this place back to time
immemorial. The city itself
seems to be cursed, built on
Indian mounds unceremoni-
ously demolished by develop-
ers in the 1850s.
Housed in a residential exhi-
bition space, the rest of
Chvezs objects breezily told a
story of how, millennia ago, a
hive of bees in the attic gave the
house an endless pot of honey
(Collective Alchemy, a pot of
actual honey) but are now, in
our upside-down world, count-
ed as hazardous pests. Anti-
monumental and domesticated,
like the city and like Laumeier
itself, Living Proposal (Sculp-
ture) represented a seemingly
underused zone teeming with
life. Here, empty bee boxes
and bee suits stood in for tow-
ers and tenants, while the pho-
tographs of tree blossoms in 33
buildings 11 stories (flower)
showed how beauty can flower
in the wake of Modernism.
Why not let entropy take hold
instead of building more box
stores that will be abandoned?
For 35 years, Laumeier
Sculpture Park has played a
leading role in exploring the
interrelationships connecting
art, history, and culture. These
recent exhibitions demon-
strated a strong commitment
to relevance, taking on press-
ing issues through engaging,
provocative sculpture. As the
curators continue to use the
park as a laboratory for a range
of artistic practices, we can
expect new works, both tem-
porary and permanent, to offer
fresh perspectives on place
and life.
Daniel McGrath is a writer
living in St. Louis.
Juan William Chvez, Pruitt-Igoe Bee
Sanctuary: The Living Proposal, 2012.
C-print, 22 x 23 in.
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BY MICHAL AMY
Submerge, 2012. Urethane, Plexiglas,
and reflections, 12 x 45 x 95 in. C
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MYTHS OF
FANTASTICAL LIFE
A Conversation with
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Meeson Pae Yang understands the power of repetition. While
one tree seen in isolation can be an object of breathtaking
beauty, a cluster offers a very different visual and emotional
experience, built up of the variations that occur across species,
the contracting and expanding spaces between forms, and the
fragmentation of light and ensuing tonal variationsall
resulting in a shifting, almost breathing pattern of interactions.
Significantly, Yang uses synthetic materials more often than
not to allude to principles found in nature at large, as well as
within our own bodies. Her forms may appear to float, evoking
organisms in water, blood, air, or the cosmos (Pods, 2010;
Biomes, 2009; Traverse, 2009), or they may remain anchored
to the floor, like stones rolled into spheres by a river and now
languishing in puddles, where they sprout algae-like accretions
(Geodes, 2010). Yangs constructions look back to the building
blocks of life, as well as forward into our future.
Michal Amy: You came to art at an unusual point in
your life. Could you explain how this happened?
Meeson Pae Yang: In 1998, my younger brother was
diagnosed with non-Hodgkins lymphoma. He died
shortly afterwards, at the age of 15. After high school,
I went to UCLA. I was struggling with the idea of loss,
without being able to register what I was feeling, and
having a terribly difficult time making sense of it all.
I started studying English literature and then moved
on to sociology. I was clearly in limbo. As I was working
through my loss and pain, I discovered that I could
barely communicate how I felt. I could not convey my
internal struggle, and so I began to make tangible
things. I bought some paint and clay. That was my first
attempt at making art.
MA: Were these early works expressionistic?
MPY: I wasnt at all sure what I was doing. I didnt
know how to use the materials. I wanted to see if I
could figure out what was happening inside me by
expressing it through an external object, so that
I could step back and look at it. In my second year of
college, I decided to apply to the art department, but
I needed a portfolio of 12 images for admission. I had
no artistic background, and so I abandoned the idea.
One week before the application was due, however, I
suddenly felt that I needed to go ahead with it and
managed to make 12 workswithout any sleep and
through sheer determination. I submitted my portfolio
and, amazingly enough, was accepted. I faced a
steep learning curve, since I was introduced to art
history, materials, and conceptual processes for the
first time. I explored concepts pertaining to the body,
cellular forms, and decay, which were directly related
26 Sculpture 32.5
Above and detail: Index, 200506. Plexiglas, vacuum-sealed
packaging, sucrose solution, vinyl tubing, and silicone in outdoor
steel and glass display case, 6.5 x 9.5 x 3 ft.
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to my brothers illness. I was looking at Kiki Smith and
Eva Hesse, who still influences my thinking.
After UCLA, I took a class at a local community col-
lege because I felt that I needed to improve my tech-
nical skills. I took a sculpture class at El Camino Col-
lege, where Professor Russell McMillin gave me the
opportunity to show work in an outdoor display case.
It was just a rectangular box of glass and stainless steel
with fluorescent lighting; it looked terribly clinical, but
it led to my first site-responsive installation. I planned a
piece featuring individual elements that came together
to form a larger unit.
MA: Does this approach to making sculpture come from
Eva Hesse?
MPY: It does. Forms are serially repeated in Hesses
work, and she explored the transparency and delicacy
of materials. I was intrigued by her use of industrial
materials that become organic, like living tissue.
MA: Hesse also used tubes. Do the tubes and suspended
bags in Index go back to your brothers illness?
MPY: I had never been inside a hospital before. Once
my brother became ill, I was exposed to tubes, probes,
needles, and IV bagsmy brothers illness has a defi-
nite relationship to Index. I still use a lot of tubes,
but they no longer literally translate medical devices.
Instead, they represent movement, transportation, and
connections between points in space. I find the trans-
lucency of the tubes, and how they filter light, mes-
merizing. They link a beginning and an end. They also
reference veins running through leaves and our bodies, networks, freeways,
and industrya constant flow. Index marks a definite turning point in my
work, with death and decay transformed into the potential for life. It refer-
ences how nature uses systems to ensure reproduction and growth.
MA: How did you decide on the title?
MPY: An index is a structured sequence that groups scattered concepts
together succinctly and illuminates an authors message. It provides a syn-
thesized access point to the information contained within a text. A system
of this sort allows you to establish relationships between different concepts
by breaking data down into parts. In Index, I examined the basic structure of
life, namely the cell, as a container of information. Cells come together to
form a living organism and are organized and separated by their function,
just as words and ideas come together to form text and are organized and
sorted by the index. Indexing is about drawing connections from disparate
parts; its about smaller units creating a whole.
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Above and detail: Disperson, 2008. Preserved moss, silicone, and
acrylic, 10 x 52 x 12 ft.
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Index made me discover what I was doing, what
my practice related to, and what I was interested in.
My previous work was about processing the past,
experimenting with materials, and constructing things.
Before Index, I was mostly interested in the body and
its fragility. I was making tumor-like formations by
twisting, bandaging, and burning foam and latex.
With Index, I entered new territory.
MA: Is your work improvised, or do you
begin with one or more drawings based
on a fixed idea?
MPY: I begin work in different ways, but it
is always a very organic process. I start with
a rough sketch on a Post-It or napkin. Once
I have my sketch, I gather materials and
combine and rearrange them in different
ways. Then, my process becomes very
physical, because I need to see the work
in three dimensions to verify whether the
materials and form make sense. This part
involves intuition and metaphor, taking
information, systems, and structures from
nature and transposing them on to my
materials. Oftentimes, a word will trigger
something, which will lead me to certain
associations and guide me toward certain
materials. I keep a log of words that set
off strong visuals in my mind, and I go back
to these words in order to build visual asso-
ciations. Part of my process involves finding
interesting materials. I occasionally stum-
ble on things when walking through Asian
marketsall sorts of dried mushrooms,
roots, and seeds. I also find materials in
tide pools, forests, industrial warehouses,
medical supply stores, cosmetic stores, and
craft and hobby shopspretty much any-
where. I start with small experiments
or prototypes. I have a box of what I call
do-dads, which are small sculptures in
which I try out materialssomewhat like
Eva Hesses studio pieces. Once I feel that
an idea has jelled, I move forward. The next
step seems mechanized, because from this
point, I work as though I were standing on
an assembly line. I make multiples and
variations on these multiples to create an
immersive field or environment. I see all
of my works as being interconnected. I
am creating an ecology or cosmology in
which all of the pieces interact and func-
tion together.
MA: Your work does not look back. You use
all kinds of new, synthetic materials and
sometimes manmade objects, including
beach balls. You seem to be abandoning
natural forms in favor of artificial forms.
MPY: I am drawn to synthetic materials
because of their refractive and translucent
propertiesin other words, how they inter-
act with light. Then, regardless of whether
the forms I gather are medical devices,
28 Sculpture 32.5
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Above: Entity, 2006. Video projection,
stereo sound, thermoformed Plexi-
glas, LEDs, aluminum, vinyl tubing,
and sucrose gel beads, 10 x 15
x 15 ft. Below: Biomes, 2009. Cork
bark, thermoformed Plexiglas, alu-
minum, laser-cut polystyrene, and
vinyl tubing, 9 x 8 x 5 ft.
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industrial materials, consumer plastics, or electrical components, I am interested
in the sum of their parts. I accumulate plastic spheres, vinyl beach balls, and
sheets of thin mylar to form otherworldly environments. I am intrigued by the
point where transformation takes placethis can be compared to a field with
choreographed dancers, who create a different image with their bodies when they
are seen from above. I use different synthetic materials to create biomorphic, geo-
logical, or celestial forms. However, I also inject organic materials into my work
to create hybrids that bring together micro and macro, hard and soft, transparent
and opaque, real and fantasy, and order and chaos.
For example, Dispersion includes dried moss, acrylic
seed capsules, and dangling vinyl branches. It rein-
terprets the methods employed by plants to dis-
perse their seeds. Each seed has its own mecha-
nism for landing, germinating, and reproducing.
Dispersion offers a fantastical interpretation of spores
spreading through thin air. The installation is like
a still, a sliver of time freezing the moment when
life is released. When viewers walk through, they
cause the balls of moss to spin through oscillations
in the air.
MA: You also use liquids.
MPY: I use fluids, as well as resin, which resembles
frozen fluid. I am drawn to the translucence, light
refraction, and visceral aspect of liquids. Like our
planet, we are made up of about 70 percent water.
Water is integral to all living things. Fluids give rise
to the kinds of natural phenomena that attract me.
For example, water causes light to bend, which gives
us rainbows, mirages, and other altered views. I
use plastics and acrylics because they refract light
in a similar way.
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Top left: Pods, 2010. Acrylic capsules, vinyl tubing, and
silicone, 10 x 10 x 4 ft. Left: Installation view of
Systems, 2006. Above: Macrospores, 2010. Ink, mylar,
vinyl, acrylic capsules, and sea fan, 10 x 30 x 30 ft.
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MA: Entity also incorporates light.
MPY: I layer light with materials, video projections, and structures. My work is about a
density of images and information, which reflects our data-saturated age. Like the Light
and Space artists, I am interested in capturing a multiplicity of views, natural phenomena,
and the fleeting sense of life in the natural world through explorations of universals such
as light, space, systems, relationships, change, order, and structure.
In Entity, an LED light shines at the center of each pod-like sculpture and becomes the
source of life. It is embedded in a cluster of translucent red sucrose gel beads and resin
whose structure resembles a dividing cell. A video projected on to this field of pods cre-
ates a rhythmic, dream-like landscape of a microscopic universe. Gel- encased LEDs also
appear in Encoding, which references DNA patterns. I also use mirrored mylar and CNC-
engraved mirrors to create ethereal reflections and shadows. In Geodes, for instance, the
light bounces off thin, turning layers of mylar, which seemingly causes pools of rippling
water to form on the walls. A large part of my practice consists in creating such fleeting
impressions.
MA: So, these sculptures refer back to nature.
MPY: Indeed, though I wouldnt say that nature is the only reference. I am most interested
in the liminal statethe in-between state. I am interested in the slippage of information
that occurs during the creative process, in what is present and what lies in the future,
what is real and what is fantasy.
MA: Do you see your works as continuing
beyond the borders of the gallery?
MPY: I see them as growing exponentially
beyond the space they occupy. Repetition,
movement, and rhythm hint at the poten-
tial for growth and expansion. I am inves-
tigating environments that create visceral,
spatial, and perceptual encounters. I also
view these works as building on each other
in the sense of building an ecosystem
of organisms regulated by the kinds of pat-
terns, structures, and systems inherent in
nature. Allan Kaprow spoke of the dissolu-
tion of the line between art and life, and
he noted that if we bypass art and take
nature itself as a model or point of depar-
ture, we may be able to devise a different
kind of artout of the sensory stuff of ordi-
nary life.
MA: We are beginning to act like nature,
as we clone bodies, manipulate genes, and
construct the human genome.
MPY: Despite our growing knowledge, there
remains a tension between chaos and con-
trol. Technology allows us to gather an
enormous amount of information and bet-
ter understand ourselves and our environ-
ment. We can prevent and cure certain
diseases, create delicious hybrid fruits, con-
struct energy-efficient buildings, view dis-
tant galaxies, and so much more. When
this information is used in a responsible
manner, we benefit. But there is always
the fear of a brave new world. My work
does not present a particular position; it
is intended as a vehicle for contemplation.
I try to introduce whimsy and fantasy. I
am, in a sense, creating a mythology of
forms.
MA: What do you mean by that?
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Above and detail: Traverse, 2009. Acetate, mylar,
ink, acrylic, PVC pipes, cement, and shadows, 12
x 40 x 20 ft.
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MPY: I use data and imagery drawn from
the world of science as my launch pad. Then
I filter, layer, reconfigure, and compress that
information into something other, which
is not a representation but an abstraction
that relates to imagination, dreams, uni-
versal concepts, narrative, and mythology.
MA: Do you imagine a narrative?
MPY: Not a set linear narrative, but a con-
stellation of relationships that engage on
multiple or parallel levels. I establish an
energetic exchange across objects, images,
and space that is transforming, evolving,
and expanding. I have always been fasci-
nated by parables, Greek mythology, sci-
ence fiction, creation stories, fairy tales,
alchemy, and fables.
MA: They are all ways for humanity to
explain the environment.
MPY: Yes, and to explore the boundaries
between the self and the outside world.
I am interested in the processes that drive
people to discover and explore. I was also
thinking about 19th-century naturalists, who
collected and documented their amazing
new discoveries, and about cabinets of curio-
sities and Mark Dions work. In a sense, my
work explores the sense of wonder and our
connection to our environment.
MA: Is there a possibility of balance between
nature and industry?
MPY: I believe that a delicate balance can
be achieved. The field of biomimicry emu-
lates natures strategies in order to solve
modern engineering problems. For the East-
gate Centre in Harare, Zimbabwe, architect
Mick Pearce and his team studied the cooling
tunnels and chimneys of termite dens.
The interior of the den holds a steady, com-
fortable temperature, even while outside
temperatures fluctuate between extremes.
Applying these lessons, the Eastgate Centre
uses 90 percent less energy than the sur-
rounding buildings.
MA: You are now venturing into architec-
ture yourself.
MPY: I am currently working on a large out-
door public art project. Immersion will be
placed near the new Biomedical Health
Sciences Education Building, on the Phoenix
Biomedical Campus at the University of
Arizona. It consists of three sculptures of
abstracted neurons, made of welded steel
and covered with epoxy paint, each 15 feet
high and 30 feet wide. Neurons process and transmit
cellular signals and serve as connection points in complex
networks. Immersion creates similar connections, guiding
its users into an expanded cellular world.
Michal Amy is a professor of the history of art at the
Rochester Institute of Technology.
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Above: Transmit, 2012. Mylar, video
projection, sound, and shadows, 10 x
20 x 15 ft. Below: Immersion (concep-
tual rendering), 2015. Laser-cut and
welded steel and epoxy paint, each
sculpture: 30 ft. diameter; overall
installation: 15 x 120 x 30 ft.
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TATSUO MIYAJIMA
The Life
Through Time
and Space
A Conversation with
Pile up Life No 1 (detail), 2008. LEDs, IC, pumice stone, and
electrical wire, 103.9 x 119.7 x 120.1 cm. C
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Karlyn De Jongh: At the beginning of your career, you created
performances that addressed the concept of existence; now your
work seems to focus more on time, as demonstrated in Pile Up
Life (2008), which appeared at the 2011 Venice Biennale. Why
did you make this shift? How are time and existence related? Are
there fundamental differences for you between the two concepts?
Tatsuo Miyajima: Existence and time are keywords connected with
The Life. There is no difference between them. Both come from
The Life; without The Life, they do not exist. At the beginning of
my career, I stood for The Life. Before that, from 1982 to around
1985, I focused mainly on existence, which I expressed through
performance works. When I became conscious of The Life, I came
up with three concepts. From 1988 to 1995, I focused on time. I
did not explain The Life directly because I did not have a clear
enough mind for it; until 1995, I was too immature to use words
and also too inexperienced. Like many others before me, I found
that it was easier to explain time as a concept than The Life.
Recently, however, I have started the work of trying to explain
The Life directly.
KDJ: The Life is a central concept for your work. It is a translation
of the Japanese word inochi. How do you understand this concept?
TM: When I translate inochi into English, I add the to life. The
meaning of The Life, as I use it, is larger than the usual sense. For
example, there is my inochi and your inochi, and animals have
inochi as well. It is common to all, and the generic name is The
Life. In the Eastern world, we embrace nature as a whole (including
human beings) and take The Life as a totality. Therefore, The Life
can refer to an individual, but the meaning is broadermore like
the universe. It is a wide and deep theory. When I talk about The
Life, I refer to all, to everything that has life. Thats why it is the
same as an ecology: it encompasses the life of humans, the life
of trees and plants, and the life of animals. I always take into con-
sideration that everything is in relationship.
KDJ: You have formulated three basic themes for your work: keep
changing, continue forever, and connect with everything. You for-
mulated these concepts some years ago: Are they not themselves
temporal?
TM: Everything keeps changing, life keeps changing. This is not
easy to explain. Even the conceptkeep changingis constantly
changing. It is linked to the second concept, continue forever. In
Western theory, forever means permanent, which implies that
forever is unchanged. But my concept of forever is that everything,
even the conceptual stages themselves, forever changes.
The three concepts define a personal artistic goal. I create works
in order to aspire. Those three concepts indicate The Lifea very
wide, deep, and free subject. Now that I am more mature, I feel
like expanding more and more and going deeper, rather than
34 Sculpture 32.5
Counter Void, 2003. Neon, glass, IC, aluminum, and electrical wire, 5 x
50 meters overall.
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BY KARLYN DE JONGH
Since the 1980s, Tatsuo Miyajima, who lives and works in Ibaraki, Japan, has been making works that address
time. Numbers made of LEDs count from one to nine or from nine to one; zero is not shown. For Miyajima,
time raises the issue of what he calls The Lifean ongoing, natural process combining life and death
and involving everything from humans and animals to plants and stones. These aspects of The Life are
visible in Miyajimas three central concepts: first, keep changing; second, continue forever; third, connect
with everything. Art in You, another important concept for him, considers the viewer as a mirror in which
to contemplate The Life.
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restricting myself. The ideas of forever and change do not go
together in Western theory. To be eternal means to be permanent,
a fixed shape that does not change eternally. But in the Eastern
world, the thought is that a shape keeps changing through
movement and that continues forever. For example, in the theory
of samsara, The Life keeps changing its appearance; this process
of continual change remains connected to life, which lasts forev-
er. The movement is eternal. We use the word permanent, but
one day, we humans, or life, will die, but changing by movement
does not die out.
KDJ: 1,000 Real Life ProjectDeathclock (2003) is a countdown to
death. The work presents many different temporalitiesthe life-
time, time remaining, the speed of counting, and the ongoingness
of the projectall working at different speeds. The speed of counting
is different for each person, as is the length of the countdown
to death. To what degree is time personal? To what degree does
it exist without human awareness?
TM: Time is definitely a personal thing. The notion that time goes
by equally only began in Greenwich in 1884 as the conceptual
interpretation of a new Modernism. It is based on an impersonal,
general theory. Essentially, time is the same as an individuals
death. It should be very personal. Individual death exists in
an infinite variety of distinctions. One is not the same as others.
KDJ: The Japanese word for the number zero is rei. It seems, how-
ever, that you use ku, which has a broader meaning and is not
necessarily a number. What does the silence or invisibility of the
zero mean to you? How does the zero relate to other numbers,
and what is its place in your understanding of time?
TM: Zero in the Western world implies nothingness. I do not show
zero, because it has two meanings: one is nothingness, and the
other is vast quantity. Vast quantity means possibilitythere is a
tremendous mass that we cannot see, but it is there. Zero was
born approximately 5,000 years ago with both meanings, nothing-
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Above: Sea of Time, 1998. LEDs, IC, electrical wire, plastic coating, and water in
FRP water pool, 125 pieces, 486 x 577 x 15 cm. overall. Below: Death of Time,
199092. LEDs, IC, electric wire, and aluminum panel, 1180 x 1380 x 450 cm.
Below: MEGA DEATH, 1999. LEDs, IC, electrical wire, sensor, and mixed media,
4.5 x 15.3 x 15.3 meters.
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ness and potential, but when it traveled to the West, it became
only nothing. What remains of the original complexity is that when
I move the zero to the right by using the decimal point, I get closer
to minus or nothing; but when I eliminate the decimal point, it
becomes plus and can increase limitlessly. I use zero like this, from
both sides. The original concept carries both meaningsthe
nothing and the plus.
KDJ: You have described time as counting. Counting implies that
there is someone counting the numbers. I have the feeling that
your work is about time as the following or changing of numbers
or as a sequence of numbers. What do you mean with counting?
Is it important to have a human involved in counting from one
to nine?
TM: I use the numbers to express change and movement. Everybody
understands changing, which is very important. The counting goes
up in order: one, two, three, and so forth. But when the numbers
move in other sequences1, 5, 10, for instanceI feel that they
are jumping rather than changing. For me, changing means that
I can predict the next step. That system became counting. With the
progression of 5, 10, 15, and so on, I dont feel that it continues
changing; I get the impression that it is becoming something else.
The other thing to emphasize is the deleting of the zero. Counting
the numbers down in order will naturally arrive at zero. But in my
work, at the moment when the zero should come, it gets dark (no
number). You can come up with reasons for why there are no zeros,
and you begin to think about zero. The numbers go down in order
and go up in order, which is very important because that expres-
sion allows viewers to consciously experience ku.
KDJ: You sometimes use mirrored surfaces, which serve as a meta-
phor for en, the Buddhist concept of relationship in which human
beings cannot exist independently. When looking at your work,
36 Sculpture 32.5
C.F. Protrusensitiveno 3, 2007. 12 LEDs, 66.5 x 1.3 x 58.2 cm.
Pile up Life No 5 (Katrina) and 6, 2008. LEDs, IC, pumice stone, and electrical
wire, 84 x 64 x 64 cm each.
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viewers see their own reflections. When you
look in that mirror and see your reflection,
what does that say about the relation you
have to yourself? Does time also have an
in-between character? How does the mir-
ror affect the space, which is duplicated
through its surface? What is the nature
of this duplicated space?
TM: The mirror reflects the viewer as being
physically present, or life in present time.
At the same time, you see the counting LED
work, so you have time and life. In fact, the
life of the audience can be seen as part
of the work, and it lives as the time of the
artwork. To recognize that, I use a mirror.
Viewers also find that the mirror reflects
space itself, which has been created by The
Life, by them. Time, space, and art are
created by human life, and that is The Life
itself.
KDJ: Art in You is another important
concept in your work. This seems to be
something that you direct to the viewer,
like the mirrored surface. How does this
concept relate to you? Do you reflect on
your own life through art? Is art a mirror
for you as well, or are you just presenting
this mirror to the viewer?
TM: For me, the artwork itself is the mirror.
The viewer encounters emotion, surprise,
and touch through my work. It is also a
device to discover myself. In the process of
making the work, through the creation
of the mirror effect, I am able to see myself.
KDJ: Because you work with light, you often
show in dark spaces, which creates a strong
spatial experience. Your choices of location
also demonstrate an awareness of space, as
in Revive Time (1995), on the Urakai River
in Nagasaki, and Luna (1994), on the Faret
Tachikawa Tower in Tokyo. To what extent
does your work address the space in which
it is presented, and what meaning does
darkness have for you as opposed to the
light of time? How does this strong spa-
tial experience reflect your holistic way of
understanding the world?
TM: My work is very site-specific. It seems
that time and space are separate things for
you, but I do not think like that. The con-
nection is evidenced, even in the West, by
chaos theory, the theory of relativity, and
the uncertainty principle. Everything is
transforming in relation with everything
else. One thing is important: time and space can constantly change their appearance to
the audience. In keeping with this thought, space has a strong relationship with the time
of numeration and audience, and each element has an influence on the others. This is
why space is such an obvious part of my work.
KDJ: Revive Time Kaki Tree Project (1996) touches on the bombing of Nagasaki on August
9, 1945. A kaki tree that survived has become a symbol. The project Web site mentions
that there are three factors behind this work: to revive the conscience of peace, to revive
an awareness of how to live, and to revive art. All three seem to imply a living together
with others. How important do you consider coexistence, which is the answer to
the question of how to live? The reviving of time seems to be done by memorializing
the past, as symbolized by the kaki tree. How important is history for you?
TM: Art exists for humans. There are big differences between indicating coexistence
and living in coexistence. The first one is a concept, the second one is the real thing.
My work is for humans, and it always wants to be realistic. My work does not indicate
time, space, and The Life; my work tries to live with these things. For this reason, it is
not enough to give the answer in the kaki tree project. My project starts from the answer.
It is an act that gives people the opportunity to think about how to live their lives. History
is important for thinking about the present time, about how to live life now. Otherwise,
it becomes dead history.
KDJ: You have been working with the concept of time for 20 years. Do you believe that
attitudes toward time have changed over the years? Has your position changed?
TM: I do not think that I have changed in the 20 years that Ive been making artworks,
though I can see it more clearly now than before. I think that it has changed the conscious-
ness of time for people. But I would not say that things are better. Conflict is not over; we
cannot solve poverty. Nothing is solved by changing the consciousness of time. Nothing
has changed since the end of the 19th century. For 20 years, I have been saying the same
thing. I would like to transport thoughts into the future. I have to keep saying the most
important things, and I will continue to keep saying them. The Life is precious.
Karlyn De Jongh works with the project PERSONAL STRUCTURES: TIME SPACE EXISTENCE.
Warp Time with Warp Self No 2, 2010. LEDs, IC, electrical wire, and mirror, 105 x 150 x 15.5 cm.
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In 2000, Anna Eyjlfsdttir, president of the Reykjavik Sculptors
Association, invited me to cover a couple of sculpture exhibi-
tions celebrating Reykjavik as the European Capital of Culture.
In the following years, this city of 120,000 witnessed a remark-
able building boom. But times change, and Iceland soon fell
victim to 2008s devastating economic bust, its crisis covered
extensively in the international news. These events are key
subjects in Eyjlfsdttirs work, revealing an underside to the
idyllic Iceland experienced by visitors, like me, who come
for its natural beauty or its contemporary art and return home
with magical memories.
Over the past 20 years, Eyjlfsdttir has had solo exhibitions
in small museums, art centers, and private art galleries in
Iceland, Finland, and Denmark. She has also participated in
group exhibitions and given performances in the Czech Republic,
Germany, Greenland, Lithuania, Spain, and Sweden, and she
presented at the Art on Armitage window gallery in Chicago.
Eyjlfsdttir studied fine art at the Kunstakademie Dsseldorf
in Germany and earlier at the Icelandic College of Art and Crafts
in Reykjavk. Born and raised in Icelands capital, she continues
to live there today.
Paradise
Lost
Opposite: Black, 2007. Aluminum, wood, plas-
ter, toys, and cage, dimensions variable. This
page: White (detail), 2007. Bronze, plaster,
toys, and found objects, dimensions variable.
BY ROBERT PREECE
A Conversation with
Anna
Eyjlfsdttir
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Robert Preece: Could you explain your instal-
lations Black and White? Why is the rearing
horse attacking a baby, and why are the
Barbie dolls escaping from a gilded cage?
Is this a comment on Icelandic society?
Anna Eyjlfsdttir: Both of these installations
refer to life in Iceland. Black is a symbol for
those who are bound and unfree, trying to
escapein this case, from a gilded cage
even at the cost of their lives. Barbie is a
role model who shows what is expected of
women: Shut up and be cute. The rearing
horse is made of aluminum and is a symbol
of power. It represents, in part, the alumi-
num companies whose factories contribute
to the destruction of Icelands wilderness.
The horse stands on top of a burnt dresser
with partly open drawers, while its front
legs rest on a white plaster sculpture of a
baby that represents innocence. White, on
the other hand, is about love, the commu-
nication of children and nature, games, and
abundance. Here, the horse is made of
bronze, a reliable material that mankind
has used for ages. Together, the two works
are a comment on abusea worldwide
problem that Iceland has not escaped. White
refers to a news story about an Austrian
girl who was imprisoned in the basement
of her house by her father.
RP: In your outdoor work Harmony, you
hung aprons from a stand, accompanied
by sounds from a fish factory. I understand
that working in this industry, which is the
economic backbone of Iceland, is now con-
sidered undesirable. Do you see Harmony
as nostalgic or critical of this perceived
undesirability?
AE: Its definitely a social piece. If I werent
an artist, Id probably be in politics. I think
that we as Icelanders should be proud of
our fishing industry. Harmony is dedicated
to the people who work on the conveyor
belts in our fish processing plants. They
have a life outside of work and let them-
selves dream. It turns out they are think-
ing about anything other than fish while
they work.
RP: Could you explain your earlier work,
Wheat Field (1997), which is about Icelandic
women?
AE: Wheat Field refers to the Viking settle-
ment of Iceland in the 9th century, which
included very strong Viking women. I made
a figureheadlike for a ships prowout of driftwood. It represents the first women to
arrive in Iceland, carrying a sword in one hand and a white bird in the other. I placed the
figure in the middle of a circle of plowed earth planted with wheat, which grew during the
exhibition. This symbolized the role played by women in creating the future of a new place.
RP: Could you tell me about Harp (1991)?
AE: This was one of my final projects at art school; for me, it was the beginning of my art.
I set fire to a harp-shaped wooden sculpture, which was placed on the coast of Reykjavik.
The title refers to the sounds one hears from earthquakes and volcanic eruptions. I put
some of the ashes from the fire into a hollowed piece of woodanother phase of this
sculptural performanceand planted grass seeds in the holes. Then, I took the piece to
the foothills of the volcano Hekla, which erupted in 1991. In this way, I could do my bit
to heal the land and the volcano.
RP: Could you explain your work in the Coastline 2000 public art project and what it
aimed to achieve?
AE: In addition to making a piece that I felt worked in aesthetic terms, I wanted to use
the opportunity to create something that could be viewed from either land or sea. For
years, I had wanted to send a work out to sea. Sailors rarely have an opportunity to enjoy
art, but when you talk to them, they are interested and have opinions on what artists
are doing. When I was collecting the signal flags, I talked to a lot of skippersthey were
very helpful, finding flags and explaining their significance. Despite all of the technology
that we have now, every ship is still kitted out with signal flags. They represent letters
and numbers, and anyone can learn to read them. They can be read from the shore even
before a ship is docked.
RP: Most visitors to Iceland dont understand that it can be a difficult place to live: it is
isolated, the population is small, and the politics of daily life can be intense. So, some
people are going nuts, fighting in boxes. Is this what a lot of your work is about?
AE: You are right that people dont get a real understanding of life here from just a short
visit. I am sometimes ready to explode, though no one would notice. I sometimes feel as
though Im always struggling with myself, and this probably shows in my work. Sometimes
I feel like a lion in a cage. Most of my pieces are based on current events. I get my ideas
from the news, Icelandic and international.
RP: In Think for Sink, you combine housework, traditionally womens work, with a kind
of monumental form. The presentation is soothing, with its polished surfaces, but there
40 Sculpture 32.5
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Harmony, 1994. Iron, rubber aprons used in fishing industry, cassette, and audio, 208 x 50
x 330 cm.
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also seems to be a tension in the juxtapo-
sition.
AE: In this piece, as in Harmony, I was
thinking about repetitive jobs that some-
times bring about a meditative state. I
wrote in oil paint on the plates, which
I then placed in a sink. The sentences
recorded my personal thoughts, or stored
memories, which no one can take away
from me. It would take a long time
to read them all; and some were hidden
you could see many of the messages from
above, but not all of them.
RP: You also use coat hangers in a num-
ber of works. What attracts you to them?
AE: I started using wire hangers because
they can be found everywhere, and I like
to use common materials. I started by
experimenting with little sculptures made
from hangers and other materials, such as
pantyhose, paper, and whatever I could
find lying about. Ive used many crates of
wire hangers to make pieces; for me, these
wire works serve the same function as
sketches do for other artists.
RP: Could you explain Power, a three-part
installation that you made for the Hafnar-
borg Museum in Hafnarfjrur? Im par-
ticularly interested in the section that
employed champagne glasses.
AE: I used champagne glasses because we
drink champagne when we celebrate. But
the glasses are empty, so the question
becomes whether the celebration is about
to begin or has already ended. In 2006,
after a two-month stay in Nigeria, I came
home to the gold-rush mentality of Ice-
landic society. New districts with glass-
fronted buildings, building cranes, and
concrete mixers were everywhere. I felt
that it couldnt be real, and I used to ask,
We must be on the way down because
this cannot be reality, right? No one was
interested in this question. The president
and the government were busy praising
the bankers and the financiers.
RP: Power also includes hanging glass
objects. Could you explain how you were
commenting on consumerism in Iceland?
AE: The first thing I knew about this piece
was that I wanted to use Doka supports,
which are popular in the construction
industry because they speed up the process
of casting concrete. I also wanted to tackle
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Above: Harp, 1991. Wood salvaged from an old pier and grass seeds, installation and performance.
Below: Think for Sink, 2006. Varnished wooden table, porcelain sink, and plates, 90 x 100 x 60 cm.
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the space in the museum. I wanted to build something
that made use of the high ceiling. I was also thinking of
what I had seen in Nigeria and what I was confronted
with when I came back to Iceland. The glass objects
were selected from a large collection that I have and
sometimes use in my works. The space became like
a chapel with a large entrance.
The third part of Power, which was installed under the
stairs, referred to my time in Nigeria and involved a
contrast between rich and poor. It consisted of empty
ceramic plates, cups, and food containers on a dirt-strewn
floor, along with bamboo canes propping up other
objects. Using the space below the stairs symbolized how
many Nigerians are marginalized by outside forces, as
well as by Nigerians in power. Outside of the construc-
tion, I hung a tuxedo and a hat, ready for anyone who
wanted to change roles and celebrate with champagne.
RP: Could you explain the contrasts presented in Paradeisos?
AE: Paradeisos is installed in a courtyard at the Reykjavik Art Museums Haf-
narhs (Harbor House) location, which looks strangely like a prison interior.
With this workthe title means within wallsIm referring to the tradi-
tional walled courtyards of ancient Greece. I started to think about how people
who had to work in these courtyards (within the walls) might feel and how
the courtyards are like prisons. I wanted to build a low-maintenance garden,
a place for everyone to enjoy, whether they come inside and walk around or
look down from above. The glass in the center of the space reflects the sky
like a pond, ever-changing like nature itself.
RP: Could you talk about the main themes of your multi-part installation
Golden Swans and Dimmalimm (a young princess)?
AE: The three golden swans symbolize those who have power because of their
position, money, or connections. They come together and make plans, often
at the expense of those with less power. They feel safe in the group, which
is the case with most gangs, political parties, families, and institutions. Another,
solitary swan stands at the edge of a circle. Right now, he is guarding the
42 Sculpture 32.5
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Left: Power (detail), 2006. Found objects, bamboo, and earth, 170 x 350 x 300 cm. Right: Power (detail), 2006. Construction molds, iron, found
glass objects, tailcoat, and hat, 810 x 720 x 450 cm.
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innocents inside the circle, but everything could change
in a moment. At the opening, there was a performance
with two children reading from a fairy tale by Muggur,
an early 20th-century Icelandic artist. The story is about
a princess who sees a swan on a pond in the palace
gardens and comes to visit it every day. One day, the
swan is gone and the princess is crying for it when a
young prince appears. He explains that he was the
swanunder the spell of a witch. He asks her to marry
him, she says yes, and they live happily ever after.
The apple is the forbidden fruit. There are many
who want to get the apple and give it to a woman. It
is the beginning and the end of so many things and
should not be too easy to reach. The scrotum-like cloth
piece is made from royal blue velvet and topped by
a phallic symbol. This is a double-edged sword, made
powerful by nature, but on which nature also places
much responsibility. Is it the downfall of those who
misuse their power?
The three photo-based works depict traumatized
people partially wrapped in bandages. They are the
victims of those wielding power. The three panels
represent a sort of communal healing process. They
express a hope for recovery and a better world.
RP: Whose workpast or presentwould you describe
as an influence?
AE: My own life and my immediate surroundings have had the most important
influence on me. Artists such as Joseph Beuys and Erwin Heerich have also been
important to meBeuys, in particular, for his experimentation with materials
and emotion and Heerich for his Minimalist approach to space.
RP: Since the financial crisis, what has been learned in terms of life and art?
AE: I have learned to trust my own intuition. I saw the crisis coming and had
constant worries and tried to prepare for it, but all in vain. It didnt touch me
directly because I had no stocks or companies to lose. We live in a country
where disastersnatural and manmadecome and go.
Robert Preece is a writer based in Rotterdam.
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Above: Golden Swans and Dimmalimm (a young princess),
2004. Video, video monitors, chairs, photo-works, bandages,
artist-made plastic objects, and plinth, installation view.
Right: Paradeisos, 2002. Concrete slabs, glass, and sand,
30 x 2500 x 1000 cm.
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Doris Salcedos Plegaria Muda is a passionate cry of denunciation against
injustice, crime, and abuse and a mute prayer for a better world. A space to
commemorate victims of murders perpetrated all over the world, it honors
people whose only fault is to have no rights, or graves to mark their existence.
It also offers hope becauseas Salcedo sayslife might prevail.
Though generated by acts of violence, Salcedos installation invites us
into a contemplative stillness. It does not tell stories of individual victims,
but gives voice to a collective trauma that has opened wounds across an
entire social fabric. Plegaria Muda steps beyond private, anonymous invisi-
bility and confronts us with the repressed, unfathomable grief unleashed
when violent death is reduced to insignificance, part of a strategy of war.
Salcedo explains how, for months, she accompanied a group of mothers
who were searching for their disappeared sons and identifying them in the
graves revealed by the murderers. Her hope is that this work can, to some
degree, evoke each death and restore its true dimension, thus allowing these
profaned lives to be returned to the sphere of the human.
At the threshold of Plegaria Muda, which was recently shown at Romes
MAXXI, we refrain from thinking, breathing, or moving, aware that we are
entering a different world. We feel compelled to adapt ourselves to the mys-
tic atmosphere of the place, with its peculiar light, smell, and almost com-
plete lack of noise. It doesnt matter if we believe or are agnostic; it doesnt
matter what our eyes see, we still feel that we have to pay respect. We are
in a cemetery, face to face with the mystery of death and perhaps resurrec-
tion.
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BY LAURA TANSINI
Opposite and detail: Plegaria Muda, 200810.
Wood, mineral compound, metal, and grass,
dimensions variable. This page: Atrabiliarios,
199293. Drywall, shoes, cow bladder, and sur-
gical thread, 122 x 244 x 13 cm.
Doris Salcedos
Plegaria Muda
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Plegaria Muda is composed of more than
100 pairs of wooden tables. In each pairing,
one table is turned upside down and placed
over the other, separated by a block of earth
from which thin blades of grass emerge.
In its modular repetition, the work evokes
a collective burial, and it serves as a meta-
phor for sacrificial lives led on the margins
of society. Salcedo wants to pay homage
to citizens massacred by the Colombian
army, as well as to victims of violent death
in the Los Angeles suburbs, where she con-
ducted research and recognized the effects
of the same gratuitous violence found in
every corner of the globe. Plegaria Muda
is a prayer for those people who, in situa-
tions of poverty, have no voice to speak of
their existence and hence appear not to
exist. However, it is also, and above all, a
tribute to life: plants grow from the tables/
coffins of this never- celebrated funeral,
symbolizing resurrection and rebirth.The
smell of damp earth and fresh grass makes
Plegaria Muda a living work of art. The
labyrinthine disposition of the tables/coffins,
the silence, and the discreet lighting con-
tribute to an intense and all-encompassing
experience involving the mind, body, and
senses. The emotional impact is strong and
generates deep feelings of mercy, compas-
sion, anger, and hope.
Pieces of common furniture, like the
tables in Plegaria Muda, play a key role in
Salcedos vocabulary. Since the beginning
of her career, she has made sculptures and
installations using domestic materials
charged with a significance accumulated
over years of everyday use. Her early works
were made with simple items such as ward-
robes, tables, and chairs, as well as clothing,
thread, and animal skins. By molding and
reshaping these objectsembedding a chair
46 Sculpture 32.5
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Left: La Casa Viuda IV, 1994. Wood, fabric, and bones, 260 x 47 x 33 cm. Below: 2 views of Noviembre
6 y 7, 2002. Lead and steel, dimensions variable.
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within a doorframe, grafting two tables into
an unstable hybridshe created trauma-
tized, dysfunctional objects, telling us of
lost or destroyed previous lives. Each article
of clothing, for instance, implied a name-
less wearer.
In Atrabiliarios (199293), old shoes (in
pairs and alone) are encased in a wall, cov-
ered by sheets of translucent, stitched ani-
mal skin. The shoes, which belonged to
disappeared women, were donated by the
families of the victims. Rendered almost
invisible by the skin, the hazy vision of these
relics arouses the memory of all those whose
whereabouts are unknown, suspended
between an anonymous present and past.
As Salcedo explained to Carlos Basualdo,
Atrabiliarios is not only a portrait of dis-
appearance, but a portrait of the survivors
mental condition of wracking uncertainty,
longing, and mourningI work with mate-
rials that are already charged with signifi-
cance, with meaning they have acquired
in the practice of everyday lifethen, I work
to the point where it becomes something
else, where metamorphosis is reached.
In La Casa Viuda (199295), Upland:
Audible in the Mouth (1998), and a series
of untitled sculptures (19892001), she took
found doors, tables, armoires, chairs, bed
frames, and other pieces of furniture
objects symbolic of the domestic sphere
and its sustaining social bondsand opened,
flayed, dismembered, and grafted them
together in brutal and disturbing juxtapo-
sitions. Cement filled the voids of drawers
and shelves in order to negate any remaining
original function and make way for
the emergence of sculptures that testify
to the destruction of the home.
While Salcedos early sculptures and
installations took their starting point from
domestic objects directly linked to person-
al and political tragedy, her later work has
replaced objects considered in themselves
with more installation-oriented strategies.
Tenebrae: Noviembre 7, 1985 (2000), which
announced the transition, was inspired by
events that Salcedo witnessed. In 1985,
Colombias Palace of Justice, in the heart
of Bogot, was seized by leftist rebel forces
who trapped more than 300 civilians inside.
During the ensuing counter-offensive, the
building was torched and 100 people died.
The Colombian government never formally
acknowledged its responsibility for those
deaths. Tenebrae is a sculptural environ-
ment (installed at various locations) that
denounces such acts and obstructions to
commemoration. Entering the first of two
galleries, the viewer confronts a physical
obstacle: two chair forms cast in lead are
positioned on the floor, and the extended
legs of another 11 chairs pierce the walls,
partially absorbed into the rooms physical
structure.
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Installation for the 8th International Istanbul Biennial, 2003. 1600 chairs stacked in the space between
two buildings.
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In 2002, Salcedo returned to the same
dramatic event for Noviembre 6 y 7, a site-
specific performance in Bogot. The perfor-
mance lasted for the same duration as the
siege of the Palace of Justice. To create an
act of memory, wooden chairs were slowly
lowered against the faade of the Palace of
Justice from different points on its roof. At
11:35 a.m. (the time when the first victim
of the siege died), the first chair was low-
ered, and at different speeds and intervals,
another 280 chairs followed over the 53
hours of the performance.
Salcedo frequently takes specific histori-
cal events as inspiration. Many of her works
are based on thorough investigations into
human conflict in different parts of the
world and at different times in history.
In a subtle and poeticalthough equally
powerful and authoritativelanguage,
she explores the universal phenomenon of
violence and the effects that it leaves behind.
Particularly with her later works, Sal-
cedo has taught us to cultivate the memory
of all victims of crime, violence, and abuse.
As her work shifted from the single to the
community, she abandoned the need to
refer to particular events. Installation for
the 8th International Istanbul Biennale
(2003) commemorates anonymous victims
without any reference to a specific incident.
In the empty space between two buildings
in central Istanbul, Salcedo piled up 1,600
wooden chairs to evoke untold personal
stories filling a collective grave.
To create the site-specific Abyss (2005)
at the Castello di Rivoli in Turin, Salcedo
reworked one of the castles grandest rooms
by extending its vaulted brick ceiling. The
installation transformed a luminous, wel-
coming space into an uncomfortable place
of incarceration and entombment. Entering
a low doorway partially bricked in at its top
and sides, visitors immediately felt con-
stricted, their bodies instinctively bending
down and closing in. The walls of the room
were encased in a curtain of brick and
cement that hung from the dome. Since
the curtain walls did not touch the ground,
the space felt as if it were on the verge
of collapsing, adding to the feeling of
oppression and danger.
Neither Installation for the 8th Interna-
tional Istanbul Biennale nor Abyss can
be tied to a specific instance of violence;
instead, both installations evoke the con-
48 Sculpture 32.5
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Abyss, 2005. Bricks, cement, steel, and resin
epoxy, 441 x 1386 x 1624 cm. Installation at
the Castello di Rivoli, Turin.
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stant, global presence of oppression, injus-
tice, and inhumanity. While the Istanbul
work produced a metaphorical image of
chaos and violence, at the Castello di Rivoli,
the sense of danger was much more direct
Abyss did more than allude, it instilled a
feeling of oppression and constriction in
the heart of each viewer, affecting his or
her behavior and attitude.
These works prepared Salcedo for Shib-
boleth, her Turbine Hall installation at Tate
Modern. The first artist to intervene directly
into the fabric of the building, Salcedo
gave voice to victims of all the injustices
that, through the centuries of civilization,
have separated people and armed one
against the other. Rather than fill Turbine
Hall with an installation, she opened up
a subterranean wound in the floor that
stretched the entire length of the former
power station. The concrete walls of the
crevice were ruptured by a steel mesh
fence, creating a tension between elements
that resisted yet depended on one another.
The scar began as a thin, almost invisible
line at the main entrance and gradually
widened into a chasm at the far end. This
fault line-like insertion evoked the broken-
ness and separateness of post-colonial
cultures, a metonymy for an absence that
negates the space of post-colonial peoples.
Salcedo dramatically shifted perceptions
of Turbine Halls architecture, subtly
subverting its claims to monumentality
and grandeur. Shibboleth raised questions
about the interaction of sculpture and
space, about architecture and its values,
and about the ideological foundations on
which Western notions of modernity are
built, about the racism and colonialism that
underlie the modern world.
The word shibboleth acts as a test of
belonging to a particular social group or
class. It is used to exclude those consid-
ered unsuitable. The history of racism,
Salcedo wrote, runs parallel to the history
of modernity and is its untold dark side.
For hundreds of years, Western ideas of
progress and prosperity have been under-
pinned by colonial exploitation and the
denial of basic rights to others. With Shib-
boleth, Salcedo focused attention on
the existence of a large, socially excluded
underclass present in all societies.
Breaking open the floor of Turbine Hall
symbolized the fracture in modernity itself,
which we try to deny, and urged us to
confront uncomfortable truths about his-
tory and about ourselves.
Salcedos sculptures and installations
arise from a deep understanding of human
conflict. She is aware that modern societal
structures are wrong, and her works
testify to our willfully blind way of living.
With Plegaria Muda, Salcedo commemo-
rates grief but also offers hope and a
promise that life might prevail. She
invites us to recognize our mistakes, take
responsibility, and work together toward
reform. As she says, I hope that, in spite
of everything, even in difficult conditions,
life may win.
Laura Tansini is a writer based in Rome.
She is a frequent contributor to Sculpture
and other publications.
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Above and detail: Shibboleth, 2007. Cement and metal, 167 meters long. Installation at Turbine
Hall, Tate Modern, London.
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Serendipity
and Faith
NARI WARD
A Conversation with
BY JAN GARDEN CASTRO
Nu Colossus, 2011. Boat, metal, wood, metal chimney,
copper drum, furniture, Plexiglas, and rubber roof-
ing membrane, approx. 720 x 336 x 168 in. Detail of
installation at MASS MoCA. C
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Jan Garden Castro: Sub Mirage Lignum, your Mass MoCA exhi-
bition, featured several massive works, including Nu Colossusa
juxtaposition of an old American fishing boat with an oversized,
vortex-shaped, Jamaican fish trap filled with distressed furniture.
Could you discuss the role of memory in your work? How did you
discover these unlikely connections between the industrial town
of North Adams and Jamaica?
Nari Ward: Denise Markonish, the curator, basically said, Do
whatever you need to do. While I was at Mass MoCA, I got a chance
to walk around several buildingsremnants of the old factory,
not yet open to the public. I was able to rummage through what
I call little treasures and pick out what I needed to work with.
For me, the memory part was inherent in going through the
space. There was a distance between it being a productive space
peoples lives were spent thereand this emptiness. Thats the
space that memory occupiesIm trying to mine the memories
of this particular space.
I had a fish trap that I found at a yard sale. Its woven, about
15 inches long, with an industrious elegance of design. Once the
fish goes through, hes not able to come back out. Its a trap, but
52 Sculpture 32.5
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Nari Wards monumental works merge mystery and meaning. His 2012 exhibition
at Lehmann Maupins Chrystie Street gallery consisted of beautiful objects with
double and triple meanings. Why would shoelaces embedded in a gallery wall
spell out We the People? Why was a fox with an Afro-tail standing at the base
of a police observation tower? Did the infrared light beam signal a gun targeting its prey or a policeman
saving a victim?
Since earning his MFA at Brooklyn College in 1992, Ward has exhibited at numerous museums and galleries,
including the Fabric Workshop and Museum in Philadelphia; Galleria Continua in San Gimignano, Italy; the
Walker Art Center in Minneapolis; and Deitch Projects in New York. Last year, his mega- exhibition at Mass
MoCA connected displaced workers in North Adams with their counterparts in his native Jamaica. Amazing
Grace (1993), an iconic work originally created in an abandoned fire station in Harlem, was reinstalled in the
New Museums Studio 231 space earlier this year. The recipient of a 2012 Rome Prize, Ward has also received
the Willard L. Metcalf Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, a Pollock Krasner Foundation
Award, and Guggenheim and National Endowment for the Arts fellowships. His work is in the collections of
the Brooklyn Museum, the Whitney Museum, the Walker Art Center, the Studio Museum in Harlem, and the
Galleria Civica di Arte in Turin.
Nu Colossus, 2011. Boat, metal,
wood, metal chimney, copper
drum, furniture, Plexiglas, and
rubber roofing membrane.
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its also a portal, a one-way door. One cant come back out. I got intrigued
with the possibility of using this form to talk about a viewers relationship
to a momentthe idea that we can never relive a moment. We go into it, it
changes us, and were in a different place, but we can never recover that
moment in its entirety. So, the trap became a metaphor for that possibility
and that limitation; its also a visually eloquent form.
I decided that I needed to make a dialogue between the form and the
placea stopped moment in time. The boat was a happy accident. While I
was working on the fish conduit, Denise sent out a memo explaining what
I was doingcontrasting the fragile economy of North Adams as a former site
of Spraig production equipment and that of Jamaica, both now economically
dependent on outside forces and trying to rebuild themselves through the
arts. Somebody wrote back that a boat was available, and I got really excited
about having another kind of dialogue between the boat and the device that
I was working on. The suspended boat became another way to layer the ideas
in the work; in a way, the boat becomes the viewer, just like the fox becomes
the viewer in T. P. Reign Bow.
JGC: Why is the fish trap filled with run-down furniture?
NW: I wanted to emulate a material that has gone through some transforma-
tion. Id have liked to throw everything on the beach to wear down naturally,
but we didnt have time for that, so we painstakingly sanded everything down.
The idea was to take away some of the surface, the
character. I wanted to talk about the idea of time. I
was trying to talk about the notion of a past time, but I
didnt want it to be nostalgicI wanted to energize it.
The Nu Colossus vortex was a way to energize the
furniture, almost as if the pieces were sacrificial ele-
ments used to activate the piece visually and spiritu-
ally. When you look into the vortex, theres a sense
of movement and action antithetical to the broken
stasis and sanded-down detritusa fixed moment
in relation to another moment.
As a sidebar about how memory seeps into decision-
making, every time I looked down the vortex, I remem-
bered watching the spaceship take off in Star Trek.
When I grew up in Jamaica, only Bonanza, Star
Trek, and the news were on. My family had the only
TV on the block, and it was a big event to come and
watch TV at our house. When I look down into the
vortex, it feels like the Enterprise going into warp
drive. Somehow, trying to actualize that came out
in this piece for me.
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Left: Mango Tourist, 2011. Foam, battery canisters, Sprague Electric Company resistors and capacitors, and mango pits, 8 figures, approx. 120 in. each.
Detail of installation at MASS MoCA. Right: SoulSoil, 2011. Earth, ceramic toilet fixtures, shoes, broom and mop handles, acrylic, and polyurethane,
approx. 236 x 236 x 236 in.
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JGC: You used wood from an Anselm Kiefer work for the fish trap.
It seemed like it filled a space three stories high, so the size and
scale were noteworthy.
NW: Kiefer had an undulating cement and rebar piece, The Wave,
in the same space, but he didnt like the floor, so the collector
who owns the work was generous enough to create a hemlock
floor. The wood hadnt dried out properly though, so it was coming
to life, starting to warp, move, and do crazy things. By the time
Kiefers show was over, the hemlock was so bent that it couldnt
be repurposed. But, for me, it was the perfect material, and I used
it all. That serendipity was an exciting part of working at Mass MoCA.
The idea of faith is another part of my practice: waiting for the
material, the pressure, and the situation to tell me what needs
to happen before I come to some decisions about where things
need to go. Thats why its really importantto me, anywayto
keep the process as open as possible. I have a backup plan but am
prepared to react to the moment.
JGC: Youve already mentioned the fox in T. P. Reign Bow. Ive read
that your discovery of the fox was a climactic part of the process.
NW: I wanted to use the height of the space and had several
different projects in mind, but I couldnt quite figure out which
direction to take. Martin Luther Kings birthday had just passed,
and Cornell West was on TV at the time, talking about being arrested.
Hes very flamboyant in his intellect, and he said, If youre not
getting arrested on Martin Luther Kings birthday, youre not cele-
brating it correctly. Even though I have some issues with Cornell,
hes a poetic, brilliant guy, and I wanted to have a dialogue with
this strange idea that he introduced. So, I said, I need to get a
fox. In a lot of folk tales, the fox is the clever, mischievous intel-
lect. I decided I had to get my own mascot. The Afro-tail became
a direct reference to him.
While I was in Philadelphia getting ready for the opening of my
show at the Fabric Workshop, I was bidding on-line to buy the fox.
I won the bid and raced to my opening, after which I took a taxi
to the suburbs, around midnight, to pick up the fox. What I didnt
expect was to be pulled over by the police. When I got to the house,
I told the taxi to wait, grabbed the fox, and went back to my hotel.
It didnt dawn on me until recently that this fox is a red fox. Its
nice to make another connection, this time with Redd Foxx, a
legend of comedy. I grew up with Sanford and Son.
54 Sculpture 32.5
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Above: Installation view of Nari Ward: Liberty and Orders, Lehmann Maupin
Gallery, 2012. Left: Amazing Grace, 1993/2013. Approx. 300 baby strollers and
fire hoses, view of installation at the New Museum.
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JGC: The title T. P. Reign Bow is a pun, and
the work itself features a police surveillance
station with the fox at the bottom.
NW: T. P. is an acronym for tactical plat-
form. The sound of the letterstee-pee
refers to Native American abodes. The idea
of a rainbow is romantic, but reign is about
authority and rule. I was trying to juxtapose
something primal and elemental with some-
thing more authoritarian and domineering.
JGC: Did the blue masking tape and tarps
on the construction relate to Occupy Wall
Street or anything like that?
NW: Ive seen these platforms in my neigh-
borhood. Theyre a show of power by the
police. I get it. Tactical platforms are gen-
erally placed in high-crime or crime-control
areas. This new technology is coming from
the military. Its also a show using visual
codes: were higher, above you, and were
looking at you.
I got intrigued with the notion of building
a tower using materials that would make
it seem temporary. I wouldnt say that I was
linking it with Occupy, but the language
of the tarp was in the news as a reference
to the temporary and makeshift. I was
bringing these seemingly contradictory
things into the same form.
JGC: There are many other things going on in T. P. Reign Bow: a spiral of zippers, lasers.
NW: The grommets overdo what would be the normal structure of the tarp. I didnt want
to bring in anything inconsistent with that material. People think theyre bullet holes or
peepholes, and I like the possibilities that opened up. I call it a Rapunzel moment. The
idea was to take one narrativethe idea of the surveillance platformand interject
another narrative that might be a little more poetic, more playful. I started to think about
how fairy tales deal with heavy things and use them as a teaching tool while also creating
visually rich metaphors. Theres a stream of zippers coming down that pools on the floor.
The zippers have human hair caught in them, which causes a moment of anxiety. You
react viscerally. I decided to take a moment of tension and keep repeating itto make it
melodic or even rhythmic and meditative. It goes from being anxiety driven to, on the
floor, mesmerizing. Cornell, the fox, is witnessing that zipper line turning into a visual
puddle, or, in some ways, a meditation.
JGC: There are two images made with shoelaces: We the People and Scape.
NW: The shoelaces are part of the wall. Holes were made, and the shoelaces were pulled
through. The idea was to use something that referenced the body and, more generally, an
anonymous mass of people. Shoelaces are specific and discrete. Everyone, from the very
young on up, has the experience of tying them. I wanted to use this almost invisible thing
and make it have a presence. I wanted to use the Preamble to the Constitution and then
slow down the recognition of the textfirst seeing the recognition of the laces and then
understanding whats being signedpresentedto you. The laces, for me, are a way of
bringing a different kind of movement and intensity into the text. The same intensity applies
to Scape, which was, for me, a really important piece in the show. So much of the work
touches on the sociopolitical questions that I have, even if its coming from a personal stand-
point, that I wanted this other piece, which is like an escape or spiritual transcendence. What
I like about Scape is that it turns the entire building into a spaceship. This is the close
encounters moment when the stairs come down. Youre never sure whats going to happen.
Jan Garden Castro is a writer living in Brooklyn, New York.
Stall, 2011. Audio, wood, light bulbs, paper, cloth, laser prints of Arnold Print Works fabric patterns, and mirrored Plexiglas, 2 bays, 8.67 x 12 x 27.67 ft. each.
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Summer is
the perfect
season
InterestedinhavingyourSculptureParkorGardenlistedhereinourJuly/Augustissue?
ContactourAdvertisingManager,BrendenO'Hanlon,atadvertising@sculpture.orgor718.812.8826
ISC Special Advertising Section: Must-See Sculpture Parks & Gardens
to rediscover nature and sculpture.
Listed here are a few must-see
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For more information on these and
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Want your Sculpture Park or Garden
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lnterested in learning even more?
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deCordova Museum and Sculpture Park
(see ad in this issuej
http://www.decordova.org/
(781j 259-8355
51 Sandy Pond Road
Lincoln, MA 01773
Summer hours: Mon - Sun, 10 am - 5 pm,
Memorial Day through Columbus Day.
Frederik Meijer Gardens & Sculpture Park
http://www.meijergardens.org/
(616j 957-1580
1000 East Beltline Avenue NE
Grand Rapids, Ml 49525
Open Mon, Wed, Thu, Fri, Sat: 9 am - 5 pm
Tues: 9 am - 9 pm
Sun: 11 am - 5 pm

Laumeier Sculpture Park
http://laumeiersculpturepark.org/
(314j 615-5278
12580 Rott Road
St. Louis, MO 63127
Open daily from 8 am to sunset year-round
with the exception of Christmas Day
Lynden Sculpture Garden
http://www.lyndensculpturegarden.org/
414.446.8794
2145 West Brown Deer Road
Milwaukee, Wl 53217
Mon, Tues, Fri: 10 am - 5 pm
Wed: 10 am - 7:30 pm
Thu: CLOSED
Sat, Sun: 12 pm - 5 pm
Oakwilde Ranch Sculpture
http://www.oakwilderanchsculpture.com/ho
me.html
209-598-4755
South Burson Rd
valley Springs, CA 95252
Open By Appointment
Peconic Landing Sculpture Garden
http://www.peconiclanding.org/
888.273.2664
1500 Brecknock Road
Greenport, NY 11944
Outdoor Living Gallery open
July through October
10 am - 4 pm
Pyramid Hill Sculpture Park
http://www.pyramidhill.org/
(513j 868-8336
1763 Hamilton Cleves Road
Hamilton, Ohio 45013
Open Daily 12 pm - 5 pm
Robert T. Webb Sculpture Garden at
the Creative Arts Guild
http://www.creativeartsguild.org/index.php/s
culpture-garden
(706j 278-0168
510 West Waugh Street
Dalton, Georgia 30720
Hours: The Creative Arts Guild's galleries
are open Mon - Fri: 9 am to 5 pm
Sculpture park is open free to the public
every day from dawn until dusk.
The Carving Studio & Sculpture Center
www.carvingstudio.org/
(802j 438-2097
636 Marble Street, PO Box 495
West Rutland, vT 05777, USA
Mon - Fri: 9 am - 5pm
Year-round
The Village Green
http://www.villagegreencashiersnc.com
(828j 743-3434
Located at the intersection of Highway 64
and Highway 107 in Cashiers, NC
Open during daylight hours
Park closes at dark.
West Branch Gallery & Sculpture Park
http://www.westbranchgallery.com/
802.253.8943
P.O. Box 250
17 Towne Farm Lane
Stowe, vT 05672
Tues - Sun, 10 am - 5 pm,
and by appointment
Friday hours 11 am - 6 pm
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Pyramid Hill Sculpture Park...
where art meets nature
1763 Hamilton Cleves Road
Hamilton, Ohio 45013
www.pyramidhill.org
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a collection of modern and contemporary sculpture
on the grounds of the Creative Arts Guild
520 West Waugh Street Dalton, Georgia 30720
Verina Baxter
Chris Beck
Carl Billingsley
Scott Burton
Jan Chenoweth
Guy Dill
Michelle Goldstrom-Lanning
John Henry
Ken Macklin
Aimee Matilla
Ryan McCourt
Don Lawler
Michael Little
Kyle Lusk
Royden Mills
Frank Morbillo
Isamu Noguchi
Jordan Phelps
Troy Pillow
Caroline Ramersdorfer
Kevin Shunn
Judith Steinberg
William Wareham
Dovis Whi|held IV
Rob Willms
Robert Winkler
James Wolfe
Two By by Robert Winkler
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Arlene Shechet
Anderson Gallery
Droll and crudely elegant, the nine
clay sculptures in Arlene Shechet:
That Time demonstrate the ubiquity
of narrative. The works emerge from
instinctual manipulations of clay
that occur slowly in the studio
through attentive play with gravity,
juxtapositions of quirky shapes, and
flirtations with contradiction and
failure. Their stories reside in iconic
abstract forms, solitary caricatures
that sustain a double identity. While
signifying a range of human charac-
teristics, they retain the essence
of their primal origins in dollops of
thick mud or lumps and coils of clay.
Regarding clay as a three-dimen-
sional drawing material, Shechet
pays attention to the mediums living
and mutable nature. The result is
that the makeshift becomes a desir-
able (and permanent) presence,
and the unrefined is appreciated
as sophisticated. For Shechet,
tragedyin which artist and clay
are characters susceptible to con-
flict and/or downfall through their
protracted encounter in the stu-
diobefits comedy. These tragicomic
narratives involve triumph over
adversity (clays temperamental
nature), as well as a proclivity for
surprising and humorous forms.
Shechets stories are unresolved
and never quite defined. They
connect with the viewers personal
experience through a seductive
anthropomorphism: their formal
economy stretches beyond the
immediate work through raw ges-
tures that suggest emotional or psy-
chological states of being. / ||||
0o| (2011), a surreal bust soaked in
a saturated mid-ultramarine glaze,
reads as a double-spouted Aladdins
lamp crowned with an Yves Klein
sponge, suggesting a fantastical,
witty tale of intrigue. Like many of
Shechets sculptures, this one has a
robust irrationality and a tentative
vigor. It signifies a transformation
from dense clay into something
distinctly human.
Although Shechet has talked about
a border between mind and feeling,
her work promotes a blurring of
these two areas, associating ideas
and the intellect with tactility and
its generative friction. In Shechets
unassuming stance for the intellect,
there is an apt parallel between
her sculptureas in the stout work
H|c cno H|c cno |cu cno |c|e
(2012)and the short novel cc
|coo c c|||ooe, by Czech author
Bohumil Hrabal. In Hrabals poetic
narrative, set in Communist Prague,
the importance and triumph of
ideas is played out in the life of the
protagonist, Hat, who operates an
obsolete compacting press for used
paper and discarded or confiscated
books, often masterworks of intel-
lectual and creative thought. His
press produces bales of compressed
paper, a source of pride for Hat,
who sees them as visual art and sig-
nifiers for the density and elegance
of ideas. Laced with the texture of
contrasting images and situations,
the rhythmic grain of repetition,
and a bond to the sensory, each
of Hats bales can be seen as the
product of a process that makes
matter denser yet more metaphori-
cal. Similarly indicative of a tendency
toward paradoxa kind of concep-
tual friction and texture in itself
Shechets sculptures simultaneously
belie and embrace the pleasure
of ideas.
reviews
Arlene Shechet, A Night Out, 2011.
Glazed and fired ceramic and wood,
45 x 13 x 17 in.
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74 Sculpture 32.5
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The Zen-like attention that Shechet
brings to her making process and
work is not unlike Hats devotion
to reading and ideas. In a descrip-
tion that conjures the physicality of
reading, he says, When I read, I
dont really read. I pop a beautiful
sentence into my mouth and suck
it like a fruit drop, or I sip it like a
liqueur until the thought dissolves
in me like alcohol, infusing brain
and heart and coursing on through
the veins to the root of each blood
vessel. To appropriate Hats words:
when Shechet makes a sculpture,
she doesnt really make a sculpture;
instead, she makes a dark comedic
reverie on physicality, the visceral,
and the tactility of thought.
|co| |,cn
0tWvts
Katie Caron
Hinterland Gallery
||c:ce, Katie Carons recent
installation, pirates the language of
natural history dioramas to depict
an eerie and toxic landscape. The
story it tells is unnerving because it
is hopeful: nature doesnt wither on
contact with chemical contamina-
tion, but changes into something
strange, a third landscape. A tree-
like form grows down from the ceil-
ing, its elongated branches reaching
into a mossy reflecting pool, where
they turn day- glo red, pink, green,
and white on contact with the
water. Is this water nourishing or
poisoned? The colors are invasive,
and the white looks like pus. The
pool reflects the underside of Carons
Yggdrasil, and gazing down into
the reflection, we see those glowing
branches reaching directly for us,
the way they would reach for the
sky, were the world not upside
down, or, if the tendrils were pre-
hensile, the way they would reach
for prey.
The pool itself is made from sheets
of mylar, bordered by a ring of moss
(constructed, like the tree and ten-
drils, of expanding foam and flock-
ing). An abstract film (drops of ink
veining into clear fluid) projected
into the pool is subsequently reflect-
ed onto the walls of the space,
creating lurid catacombs of light
and bathing the whole in an oddly
comforting, television glow.
Carons work is typically immer-
sive, modeling hybrid landscapes
of nature and industry (and their
shared structural forms), but this
environment opens additional meta-
physical spaces. We have three rep-
resentations of one image: the tree
itself, its reflection, and a projection
that has been altered by the geog-
raphy of the tendrils. Together,
they represent not only blight in
progress, but also the echo of that
blight. This resonant echo speaks
to the pervasive reach of toxicity in
our environment and the mutually
dependent relationship we have
long since entered into with the very
chemicals that poison our bodies
and homes.
Left, top and bottom: 2 installation views of Arlene Shechet: That Time,
2012. Below: Katie Caron, Drosscapes, 2012. Video projection, mylar, foam,
acrylic, and flock, dimensions variable.
sculpture
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The term drosscape was originally
coined by MITs Alan Berger to
describe the repurposing of toxic
landscapeslandfills and polluted
factory sitesas new locations for
businesses and housing develop-
ments. It is not the afterlife of con-
taminated sites that Caron is explor-
ing here, but the moment of conta-
mination itselfthe pink line frozen
halfway up the tree. One is put
in mind of Palndromo Mszross
photo project The Line, which
documents the destruction wrought
by the failure of a dam at the Ajkai
Timfldgyr alumina plant in
Hungary, where 185 million gallons
of red sludge, containing toxic
amounts of radioactive mud, spilled
into nearby towns and forests. A
dozen people died, and for months
later, the landscape appeared
bisected, with the lower four feet of
everything (houses, trees) discolored
and poisoned. The effect could be
described as otherworldly were it
not a permanent, and expanding,
part of our world. The question of
how we find beauty and meaning
in that landscapeno longer a
rhetorical exerciseis one that Katie
Caron is urgently asking.
|c|n tc||e|
WAsMt Ws1oW, 0t
40 under 40: Craft Futures
Renwick Gallery of the
Smithsonian American Art
Museum
When curator Nicholas R. Bell pon-
dered how to celebrate the Ren-
wicks 40th anniversary, he opted for
40 artists under 40. While he admits
that the conceit isnt novel, the
framework allowed him to survey,
or sample, rather than chronologize.
Even so, shared themes emerged,
and age mattered. According to Bell,
this post-9/11 generation, whose
new normal includes unease and
conflict, bears distinctive markers.
They hold a renewed interest in the
handmade in tandem with an inter-
est in new technologies. They
explore recycling and sustainability.
And most importantly, in a throw-
back to an earlier generation, they
seek to make the world a better
place. To make his selections, Bell
eschewed a conventional call for
portfolios; instead, he informally
polled professional colleagues, hunt-
ed the Internet, and visited galleries,
fairs, and studios. The final group
yielded a stylistic array of provoca-
tive hybrids, from installations and
sculptures to more traditional craft
objects.
The exhibition also brought domi-
nant trends to the fore: an engage-
ment with the body, sociopolitics,
and material richness; a non-linear
way of thinking; and an interactive
approach to the artwork as part
stage and part performance. Sebas-
tian Martoranas |m|e|cn, an
emotionally charged remake of the
memorial tradition, immortalizes
the artists act of raising his father
from his deathbed. With a distant
nod to Claes Oldenburg, soft pillow
becomes hard marble. Martorana,
inspired by Italian Baroque sculpture
and trained as a stone carver,
chisels letters as a living, and those
skills are immediately apparent
in his ingenuity. The marbles blue
veining defines the pillows edge.
Elsewhere, the patterning suggests
geological strata, lending transcen-
dence to material salvaged from
abandoned Baltimore townhouses.
Stephanie Liner also addresses
death and recycling, but her subject
is the demise of the furniture and
textile industries in the Southern
U.S. |emen|c c| c |ccmeo tcn
||o:| deftly pairs carpentry and
sewing, as well as their respective
gender associations. Upholstered in
floral chintz and standing on fuchsia
feet, a constructed orb becomes
the unlikely stage for a performance.
A live model in a dress of the same
fabric (which also covers the orbs
interior) silently returns the viewers
gaze through a window. Both uphol-
stery and costume are meticulously
hand-sewn, and Liners use of double
piping enhances the sense of puffi-
ness. At once prison and cocoon,
the diminutive abode transforms
an emblem of colonialism into a
middle-class vision of nobility gone
awry.
A similar irony informs Theaster
Gatess poetic ||||| |c.|||cn,
which joins the architecture of a
shotgun shack (Southern housing
for poor African Americans) with
made in China plattersa clever
play on Chinese export porcelain,
which was once a status symbol for
the wealthy. Gatess rough, yet finely
crafted wooden structure becomes
a super-scale cabinet to display
four platters made collaboratively
with Zheng Ning in China. To pro-
mote communal understanding,
their decorations chronicle little-
known Chinese immigrants to the
19th-century South and spin a
narrative of marginalization not
unlike Gatess own politically
charged identity as a gay African
American.
Clearer ties to traditional craft
belie subversive content in works
by Lauren Kalman, Cat Mazza, and
Olek. In the performance tradition
of Chris Burden and Orlan, Kalman
upends media ideals of feminine
Top: Stephanie Liner, Mementos of a Doomed Construct, 2011. Upholstery, ply-
wood, fabric, sequins, yarn, embroidery, adhesive, and cardboard, 80 x 65 in.
diameter. Above: Sebastian Martorana, Impressions, 2008. Marble, 8 x 24
x 18 in. Both from 40 under 40.
sculpture
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beauty in 3|ccm, ||||c|e:en:e, cno
0||e| |e|mc|c|c|:c| |m|e||||
men|, using medical photographs
of STD sites as guides to insert pre-
cious stones into her body. Photo-
graphs and a display poignantly
record her pain and endurance. In
|n|| |c| |e|ene, Mazza applies Knit-
Pro software to footage from World
War II, Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghan-
istan, creating a stuttering fiber
video. Named after a World War II
magazine consisting of knitting pat-
terns for garments to send to the
soldiers, |n|| |c| |e|ene, with its
game-like visuals and sounds,
underscores the psychic disconnect
of current combat practices. Olek
also spoofs the military-industrial
complex in the psychedelic installa-
tion |n||||n | |c| |o****. Known
for guerrilla street operations, here,
she camouflages the contents of
her re- created apartment in a life-
affirming, crocheted cover.
In betting on the artists in 40
under 40: Craft Futures, the
Renwick questioned the current art
market and its need for goods, even
as the exhibition will most likely
increase the investment value of
these products. At the same time,
much of the selection stated
the obviousthat the boundaries
between craft and sculpture are
porous at best, and pluralism rules.
A stir to the eye and the mind, this
unruly Honoe||cmme| restored
much-needed humanity and democ-
racy to the notion of commodity.
c|c| cno,
Ntw osK
Hijo Nam
Tenri Gallery
Hijo Nam, a Korean-born artist living
in the New York area, recently put
on a strong show of sculptures and
low reliefs animated by her Bud-
dhist beliefs. Interestingly, much of
the integrity of these works stems
from their individual orientation, in
which the inspiration changes from
piece to piece rather than following
a path of serial repetition. As a
result, each piece feels like it is driven
by its own necessity, which results
in noticeable variations in form. It
isnt that the works contrast vastly
in appearancemany are made
with oxidized, rusty steelbut one
senses that Nams conception for
each individual sculpture is a one-
off meditation on emptiness, time,
and the inherent gravitas of materi-
als. Her work compels us to think
indeed, to meditateon the innate
messages contained in surfaces that
appear to have been worn down by
time.
Nams lyrical sensibility finds
expression in the use of found mate-
rials. In t,||no||:c| /|eu (2012),
an oxidized steel cylinder, decorated
with dark paint, renders the moon,
the sea, and other elements taken
from nature. The shapes are cut out
from the curving wall of the cylinder,
and a rotating base allows viewers
to see a progression of images as
they spin into view. t,||no||:c| /|eu
communicates Nams abiding faith
in the beauty of nature, focusing
on both past and present. t,:|e c|
|c|o|e (2012) creates an abstract
reference to the turning wheel of
natural processes, perhaps the cycle
of the seasons. The center consists
of a rough container lid, surrounded
by a slightly broken cattle wheel.
These two components emphasize
centeredness while eliciting a feeling
of balance and repose. A simple
thought perhaps, but it is beautifully
realized.
Nams great trick is to engage us
in whimsy, only to inject an element
of seriousness that borders on an
acceptance of fate. Although human
action affects nature, as we know
from global warming, we can see
that nature is much larger, and more
independent of us, than we might
imagine. But Nam is not only inter-
ested in the natural world, she also
devotes attention to the inner con-
tent of emptiness. In ||eeocm ||cm
/.c||:e (2012), copper wire creates
a rough sphere that contains almost
nothingjust a short steel bar out
of which springs a small flower cre-
ated with different colored wires (the
same wires serve as ties to hold the
sphere together). The metal stand
is supported by a flat metal plane
hanging just above a cut tree trunk.
The openness and instability of the
torso-like ball, which spins a bit in
response to air movements, suggests
the wavering nature of human
desire, with only the heart to stabi-
lize ones feelings. The wires, twisted
together at the top of the sculpture,
might be prison bars, yet they create
windows from which it is easy to
Above: Olek, Knitting is for Pus****,
200511. Acrylic yarn and mixed
media, dimensions variable. From
40 under 40. Right: Hijo Nam,
Freedom from Avarice, 2012. Copper
wire, dimensions variable.
sculpture
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escape. This double visionof con-
tainment and porousnessfits
Nams sensibility perfectly.
|cnc||cn 6ccomcn
1osoW1o
Evan Penny
Art Gallery of Ontario
Evan Pennys sculptures, while
bringing to mind the work of Duane
Hanson and Ron Mueck, are pre-
sented in ways that confuse the
viewers understanding. Penny, who
explores the space between the two-
dimensional and human perception,
is concerned with how images
in the digital age are increasingly
modified and moving further away
from reality. His exploration was
inspired by the 1998 exhibition Arti-
ficial: Figuracions Contemporanies
at the Museu dArt Contemporani
de Barcelona, which presented
Thomas Ruffs large-scale photo-
graphic portraits across from sculp-
tural portraits by Stefan Hablutzel.
Penny became interested in the play
of real and replica and how these
art forms reinforced, and diminished,
each others authenticity.
As visitors entered Re Figured,
they were confronted with a sculp-
ture and photograph, both titled
||e|:| /: (2003). The distorted male
faces created a funhouse-like experi-
ence. It seemed impossible that
images could be so stretchedmore
likely that our perception was some-
how dizzyingly confused. tcm|e |n
tcn|e\|, a photograph alongside the
introductory text, further confounded
interpretation with its depiction
of the artist standing next to the
||e|:| /: bust. In the photograph,
the sculpture no longer appears
stretched, but its surroundings
including Pennyare intensely
compressed.
In 'con e|| |c|||c|| c| ||e /||||
c |e Hc (|c|; and 0|o e||
|c|||c|| c| ||e /|||| c |e H||| (|c|;
3e (both 201011), Penny considers
the complexity of self-perception.
In this body of work, he imagines
alternate versions of himself that
incorporate historical fact, though
they are skewed by the artists inti-
mate perspective. The youthful bust
is paired with an elderly foreshad-
owing of Pennys future self. The
accompanying photographs, while
recognizably representing the artist,
should be thought of as autobio-
graphical portraits telling a partially
imagined life story that includes the
factual distortions inherent in self-
portrayals.
|cnc|c|c tcn.e|c||cn /: and /.
(both 2008) feature a female figure
distorted to grotesque proportions.
Penny made use of Canadian artist
Michael Awads Time Camera, which
takes a single photograph over
an extended period, in this case, 30
seconds. Penny used the resulting
image to create monstrous sculp-
tures in which the blurred forms are
only sporadically recognizable as
human. The real hair (human or ani-
mal) somehow acceptable in his
other works, takes on an abject qual-
ity in these pieces. Although the
portrayal focuses on a friend
engaged in conversation with the
artist, this was perhaps the most
repellent work in the show.
On a superficial level, the works
featured in Re Figuring can be
appreciated for Pennys technical
mastery, as well as for the fun,
albeit disorienting experience. They
encourage us to reconsider the
digital distortions that we encounter
and readily accept on a daily basis.
||,||nc ||e||n
1tt Avt v
Guy Zagursky
Sommer Contemporary Art Gallery
In past sculptural installations and
performances, artist and musician
Guy Zagursky has pursued the theme
of power and its downfall. In a video
documenting an arm-wrestling com-
petition held at the 2006 Art Basel,
for example, Zagursky is crowned
World Champion of Art, after
wrestling with and defeating artists,
critics, and gallery owners. His
recent exhibition, conceived after his
return from a two-year residency in
Berlin and set against a background
of civil unrest in Europe and reports
of police brutality, featured objects
that served as metaphors for poten-
tial violence. Plastic shields of the
type used by riot police around the
world were suspended in a row on
the far wall of the gallery, each one
accompanied by a pair of steel
batons. When viewers treaded on the
floor, they activated a mechanism
that caused the batons to begin
beating the shieldsa metaphor,
surely, for victims turning on their
aggressors.
No Lifeguard on Duty, the title
of Zagurskys show, suggested that
we are all defenseless and must
look out for our own safety. It also
inferred the presence of water. But
the only positive visual connection
was a brass water tap from which
nothing flowed. The real point of
interest was found in the mirrors set
into the floor, which endlessly
Right: Evan Penny, Young Self: Por-
trait of the Artist as He Was (Not) #1,
2011. Silicone, pigment, hair, fabric,
and aluminum, 76 x 86 x 59 cm.
Below: Evan Penny, Panagiota: Con-
versation #1, 2008. Silicone, pig-
ment, hair, and aluminum, 69 x 275
x 15 cm.
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reflected the image of the tap. This
rather strange expression of infinity
relates to Zagurskys meditative
floor works in the form of deep wells
that employ neon lights as well as
mirrors.
For Zagursky, the hammering noise
produced by the beating batons
echoed the sounds that he produced
while carving two female sharks
the centerpiece of the showfrom
a massive block of Marine plywood.
The slow, labor-intensive process
required to realize these works
stands in sharp contrast to Damien
Hirsts easy appropriation of a real
shark for one of his best-known
installations. The details of Zagur-
skys sharks are important. The fact
that they are pregnant emphasizes
that the life cycle of one of the old-
est creatures on our planet is unend-
ing. So, too, is the prospect of vio-
lence.
The sharks were supported horizon-
tally on trestles covered in red paint,
a color employed by various workers
movements to symbolize blood shed
in the struggle against oppression.
Beached, immobile, and artificial,
they were clearly harmless, but one
could envisage a scenario in which
the room filled with water and these
powerful, voracious creatures came
to life and attacked. Like the batons
ready to beat the police shields,
these static objects suggest a
moment of inaction before physical
power takes over.
Nearby, the hood of an old Chev-
rolet Capriceonce used by police
patrolswas suspended on another
wall. After restoration, Zagursky
turned its surface into a minimalistic,
black seascape, its white undercoat
slightly exposed to reveal a water-
line, a tiny sail boat, and a moon.
The scene might represent the
artists yearning to remove himself
from the harsh realities of life and
sail off to distant shores, but escape
is just one response to the issues
raised by this effective and unusual
presentation.
/ne|c |e.|ne
At cMt strtc1ust, j AAW
Noe Aoki
Toyota City Museum and Nagoya
City Museum
In the field of Japanese heavy metal
sculpture, Noe Aoki stands out for
her transformation of iron into a
malleable, almost lightweight mate-
rial. A 1983 graduate of Musashino
Art University, outside of Tokyo,
she has been included in numerous
museum group shows and was
awarded a Minister of Education New
Artist Prize in 2000. This show
marked her first major retrospective
exhibition.
The visual quality of iron remains
intact, even in her earliest pieces. An
abstract assembly of iron staffs can
evoke a mound of holders for prayer
candles (|n||||eo, 1992) or a large
bundle of torchlights (|n||||eo, 1997).
Aoki seems fond of upward growth
in these works. tomo|o t|coo
(2002), on the other hand, looks like
a pile of old scraps at first, without
immediate reference. Constructed
with iron wire, the squares are larger
on the outside and smaller at the
center; together, they create a capti-
vating formation, each one a fabrica-
tion of endless variations.
For mc,c (:|coo .c||e,; (2012), Aoki
cut rings, one after another, out of
the same industrial iron plate using
acetylene and oxygen gas. Joined
together, almost emptied of weight,
the form seems to lift off the
ground. There is nothing but form
at first, then a rhythm slowly sur-
faces from the different sizes of the
same, repeating shape. The work
takes on an amusing quality, as if it
were a quick sketch about to mate-
rialize.
Aoki leaves scratch patterns on
some of the wire to give it a more
natural look. Hc|e| |n ||e /|| (2012)
spreads out numerous legs like
Louise Bourgeoiss |cmcn, but Aokis
piece is innocently awkward and
denies solidity. Each leg unfolds in
a slow movement of drizzling rain-
drops. In |no|e|, |c|||n |cun
(2012), a pair of conical sculptures,
she makes the iron whimsical
by creating a long chain out of flat
disks that evoke movement through
their different angles, twists, and
turns.
Aoki also thoughtfully mixes
media. c|e,cmc (2012), which com-
bines iron and soap, is named after
a secret mountain revered since
ancient times. In a small room, 12
crudely constructed, shelving stands
support bars of lightly tinted white
soap. The different configurations
of the dark-colored shelves and the
varied tints of the soap make a
refreshingly clean, delicate, and
warm contrast. The hint of elegance
in this piece recalls Aokis work in
another medium, copperplate
engraving. Delicate, with lines like
strands of hair, these images appear
as unborn dreams or desires that
the artist hopes will see the light of
day. Her work is a journey between
these desires and the nature of a
material that dates back to prehis-
toric times.
Through the years, Aokis sculp-
ture has gained in complexity, yet
she manages to maintain a unique
and rough-edged quality even in her
most sophisticated images. Looking
back on her career, one finds that
the work demonstrates an indepen-
dence and sense of surprise. Aokis
stubborn, singular exploration of
iron triggers the question of what
comes next.
|co|c |c|cne
Above: Guy Zagursky, installation view of No Lifeguard on Duty, 2012.
Below: Noe Aoki, moya (cloud valley), 2012. Iron, installation view.
sculpture
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Summer of Sculpture
Wynyard Quarter
In conjunction with the ISC sympo-
sium International Dialogue, Outdoor
Sculpture 2001 Incorporated Society
(New Zealands only sculptors soci-
ety) initiated, curated, and presented
Summer of Sculpture Organized
by artists Charlotte Fisher, Neil Miller,
and Richard Mathieson, the show
populated Aucklands newly devel-
oped Wynyard Quarter waterfront
with the works of 24 New Zealand
sculptors. Some were traditional,
three-dimensional objects, while oth-
ers were acoustic, projected image,
and text-based pieces.
A cluster of decommissioned silos
and the outdoor urban/industrial
areas of the Wynyard Quarter pro-
vided distinct spaces for this wide-
ranging exhibition. Installations
were housed in the 140-foot cham-
bers of the silos and dramatically lit
by natural light channeled through
louver windows. Fiona Garlics cau-
tionary tale in the form of a giant
plywood charm bracelet floated just
above head height. John Radfords
monster cardboard bolt screwed its
way through a wall and out the
other side. Louise Purvis responded
to her silo by constructing a 12-foot-
high, cage-like church out of steel
modules. Christine Hellyars
6c||e||n brought together three
human-size, bronze plant forms,
and Chiara Corbelletto suspended
net-like polypropylene structures
from a 30-foot internal steel walk-
way. Arriving on a banana boat from
a Pacific island and entering a new
community was the theme of
|cc|o|| (to turn) by Melanie Rands
and her daughters, Ahi and Keva.
Richard McWhannells life-size,
carved wooden girls, |enee cno |cn,
stood in conversation, observing.
Wafting throughout the spaces was
the sound of Phil Dadsons |e |c|e
c| |||n |c :cmec :cn.e|c||cn
u||| |cne, an aural work supported
by three video screens showing the
artist making the music by playing
pairs of wet river stones.
An even greater variety of forms
colonized the outdoor spaces. An
imposing, 40-foot-high gantry that
doubled as a viewing platform car-
ried a red banner by Denis OConnor
bearing the final line of Bob Orrs
poem Container Terminal: Into
my hand they lowered an island.
Hooked onto the side of the gantry
was a 10-foot-wide, trapped steel
albatross from Greer Twisss conser-
vation series. Brett Grahams seven-
foot-diameter iron gong |c|nc c||
|c|nc |oc tc|cn|c| |enoo|om, a
Pacific-oriented, social conscience
message, hung from the base of a
silo. At the opposite end of the
Wynyard Quarter, Steve Woodwards
kinetic bronze |nn|n |e| mirrored
the lines and forms of the busy
recreational waterside, looking as
if it were part of the action.
Spaced between these works was
a display of outdoor sculpture that
ran the gamut of subject matter,
style, and material. Charlotte Fishers
eight-foot-high concrete marker,
3ec||n, stood in front of the silos.
Two of Barry Letts dogs stood sen-
tinel, as did Lucy Bucknalls bronze
rod polar bear, which surveyed the
childrens playground. Marte Szirmay
explored the qualities of bronze
in her exquisitely shaped |c||; John
Edgars marble and basalt carving
was just as fine. Forms ranged from
a fountain of multiple cast bells in
Richard Mathiesons 3e|| cue| and
the representational seedpods in Jim
Wheelers |\c||: |c||.e, |mm||cn|
|c|||c|| to Llew Summers figurative
|ce u||| H|n
Phil Neary presented a line-up of
his |.e||een bronze Buddha figures
on I-beams, and David McCracken
cut and welded Cor-ten steel into a
curved looping form that belied the
nature of the material. Jeff Thomson
embedded galvanized steel in cast
concrete to create o|emen| |c ||e
|,c|| |e|e|ee, which is a hand-
book of practical information on the
properties and uses of a variety of
building products. Neil Millers |c||en
/ne|, a long assemblage of tubular
galvanized steel, crept across the
ground as if escaping from the adja-
cent boat-builders.
All but two of the works in Sum-
mer of Sculpture had been exhibited
before, in one form or another. The
intention was to put together a
quality show that demonstrated how
sculpture has more than one life
works can be installed and displayed
across a range of sites and venues.
Such a practice alleviates the pres-
sure on sculptors to create new
works for successive exhibitions,
while generating new responses
through new contexts.
|c||n Hccouc|o
Above: Louise Purvis, Silo Construction, 2012. Galvanized steel, 12 ft. high.
Right: Chiara Corbelletto, Complex Simplicity, 2013. Polypropylene, 9 ft.
high. Both from Summer of Sculpture.
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80 Sculpture 32.5
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isc PEOPLE, PLACES, AND EVENTS
I SC CHAPTER NEWS
The International Sculpture Centers Chapters serve as a vital voice for the ISC,
advancing our mission locally and regionally. There are currently two chapters
in the United StatesChicago Sculpture International (CSI) and Texas Sculpture
Group (TSG)with chapters in Australia and on the West Coast in the pipeline.
To learn more about forming an ISC chapter, contact Manju Philip, Mem-
bership Manager at <manju@sculpture.org>.
Texas Sculpture Group
TSG stepped into spring with plenty of activity and new beginnings. New
board members Dewane Hughes (Tyler), George Tobolowsky (Dallas), and
Terra Goolsby (Austin) are bringing new ideas and energy. An upcoming
exhibition at the State Capitol in Austin, curated by Diana Roberts, will be
on view June 1115, with a closing celebration and reception on June 15,
5:307:00 p.m. TSG has also been invited to participate in the 2013 Texas
Biennial. A member exhibition at the Art Car Museum is planned for
September to coincide with the biennial (dates have yet to be finalized.) The
final exhibition on the TSG calendar right now is a show featuring selected
works from TSG members at Red Arrow Contemporary in Dallas, November
23, 2013January 4, 2014.
TSG members have been busy as well. Michael Manjarris is continuing
his work with Sculpture for New Orleans. Initiated in 2008, the program
supports public art in New Orleans, using large-scale outdoor exhibitions
to increase the visibility of art in the city. Several TSG members have work
in the exhibition, including James Surls, Sharon Kopriva, William Cannings,
George Tobolowsky, and Ed Wilson, along with other prominent sculptors.
Texas Tough, at Blue Star Contemporary in San Antonio, June 6August
24, 2013, features work by TSG members Jill Bedgood, Amita Bhatt, Sharon
Kopriva, and Sherry Owens. The reception is June 6, 68 p.m. For more infor-
mation about TSG or to join, visit <http://texassculpturegroup.com>.
Left: Kason Kimers, At Rest, 2010. Steel, 66 x 36 x 36 in. Right: Mia Kaplan,
Swamp Flower, 2013. Steel, 76 x 66 x 50 in. Both works shown at TSGs
Poydras Corridor Sculpture Exhibition, New Orleans.
Chicago Sculpture International
2012 was an exciting year for CSI, with most of its efforts focused on the
International Sculpture Conference, which was held in October. The group
produced several indoor shows, including Form and Flora at the Lincoln Park
Conservatory, Installation Experiment in Pilsen, and Six to the Third at Lill
Street Art Center. In addition, CSI installed 64 works along the Chicago lake-
front in collaboration with the Chicago Parks District; this was the largest
show of outdoor sculpture in Chicago since the days of the Navy Pier shows.
CSI is currently working with the Chicago Parks District on an exhibition that
will showcase the trees of Chicago. As trees around the city end their life cycle,
a selected group will be transformed into sculpture, bringing attention to
green spaces throughout the city. CSI is also excited to be participating in Expo
Chicago in September 2013. The groups involvement in last years inaugural
Expo made a well-received contribution to the citys ongoing dialogue about
sculpture. In addition to exhibitions, CSI continues to strengthen its network
and community of sculptors and supporters, expanding ideas about how sculp-
ture can impact and define the culture of Chicago, the Midwest, and beyond.
For more information or to join, visit <www.sculpturechicago.org>.
Below: Selection of works from CSIs Chicago Parks Outdoor Sculpture
Exhibition, 201213. Center: Works from Installation Experiment.
Bottom: Works from Form and Flora.
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_______________
________________
www. t hi nks cul pt ur e. com
For estimates and project inquiries
contact Becky at beckyault@thinksculpture.com
or Tracy at execassist@thinksculpture.com
Tradi ng hours: 8:00 am to 4:30 pm
a.r.t. research enterpri ses
T HE F I NE AR T F OUNDRY
717.290.1303
Hero, stainless steel artists: Alexander & Marina Royzman
stainless steel
stainless steel
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