Sculpture 2013 05

sculpture
May 2013
Vol. 32 No. 4
A publication of the
International Sculpture Center
www.sculpture.org
Tilman
Alice Aycock
Pat Hoffie
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THE WORLDS NEWSSTAND
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_______________________
In February, International Sculpture Center Executive Director Johannah
Hutchison and Conference and Events Manager Erin Gautsche hosted
a special ISC eventthe International Sculpture Symposium. We all
know our international symposiums are a big deal. Tours, lectures,
workshops, and side trips to homes, galleries, and landmarks in exciting
new surroundings make each one a great event. Holding the sympo-
sium in New Zealand drew sculptors, collectors, patrons, curators, and
educators from all over the world. It was truly an international event
and a reminder of the value of our fantastic organization.
The many positive comments that we received from attendees remind
us of the value of the ISC to its members and everyone interested
in sculpture. Here are a few examples of what participants were most
excited about:
Connections and conversationsinspiration and inclusion.
I thought the entire event was fabulous, and Auckland was such
a spectacular venue.
The sculpture parks with artists on site.
The visits to private homes and the time to talk to collectors.
Given the diversity of those in attendance, it is interesting to note
one other common response from attendeesthe warmth and hospi-
tality of our New Zealand hosts. From the time that ISC members
arrived in New Zealand, they understood that everything possible would
be done to make their visit exciting and rewarding. There was an extra-
ordinary personal touch to every experience. As a result, the sympo-
sium offered a unique opportunity for ISC members to learn and build
relationships with one another. And, after all, isnt that one of the best
things about being a part of the ISC?
In closing, I would like to announce that our next ISC conference
has been scheduled for December 14, 2013 in Miami. Our bi-annual
conference is one of the highlights of the year. Registration will open
in June, but for now I would encourage you to save these dates for
what promises to be a great opportunity to network with collectors,
patrons, and sculptors from throughout the world.
Marc LeBaron
Chairman, ISC Board of Trustees
From the Chairman
4 Sculpture 32.4
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
20 Commissions
22 Forum: Zurich: Art and the City
by Kathrin Frauenfelder
80 ISC News
Reviews
71 Ephraim, Utah: Jared Steffensen
72 Los Angeles: Charles Ray
73 San Francisco: Ann Weber
74 Washington, DC: Antico: The Golden Age
of Renaissance Bronzes
74 Chicago: Richard Hunt
75 East Hampton, New York: Costantino Nivola
76 New York: Dave Cole
77 Portland, Oregon: Crystal Schenk
77 Sherwood Park, Alberta, Canada: Lyndal
Osborne and Sherri Chaba
78 West Bretton, U.K.: Joan Mir
79 Gongju, South Korea: Nature, Man, and Sound
On the Cover: Tilman, Artitecture 1 / Cabane
Communal (detail), 2011. Lacquer on wood, approx.
500 x 420 x 300 cm. Work installed as part of
Columna 1 / Lyon Biennial 2011 Satellite Program,
Chasse-sur-Rhone, France.
Features
24 Color as Material: A Conversation with Tilman by Robert Preece
32 Pat Hoffie and the Sublime Impossible by Carol Schwartzman
38 Making the Bridge Breathe: A Conversation with Douglas Hollis by Cathryn Keller
44 Public Sculpture in an Age of Diminishing Resources: A Conversation with Cliff Garten
by Lisa Paul Streitfeld
48 Public Art in Council Bluffs by Kyle MacMillan
52 Dangerous Structures: A Conversation with Alice Aycock by Joyce Beckenstein
32
sculpture
May 2013
Vol. 32 No. 4
A publication of the
International Sculpture Center
38
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S CUL PT URE MAGAZ I NE
Editor Glenn Harper
Managing Editor Twylene Moyer
Editorial Assistants Elena Goukassian, Amanda Hickok
Design Eileen Schramm visual communication
Advertising Sales Manager Brenden OHanlon
Contributing Editors Maria Carolina Baulo (Buenos
Aires), Roger Boyce (Christchurch), Susan Canning (New
York), Marty Carlock (Boston), Jan Garden Castro (New
York), Collette Chattopadhyay (Los Angeles), Ina Cole
(London), Ana Finel Honigman (Berlin), John K. Grande
(Montreal), Kay Itoi (Tokyo), Matthew Kangas (Seattle),
Zoe Kosmidou (Athens), Angela Levine (Tel Aviv), Brian
McAvera (Belfast), Robert C. Morgan (New York), Robert
Preece (Rotterdam), Brooke Kamin Rapaport (New
York), Ken Scarlett (Melbourne), Peter Selz (Berkeley),
Sarah Tanguy (Washington), Laura Tansini (Rome)
Each issue of Sculpture is indexed in The Art Index and
the Bibliography of the History of Art (BHA).
isc
Benefactors Circle ($100,000+)
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I NT E RNAT I ONAL SCUL PT URE CE NT E R CONT E MPORARY SCUL PT URE CI RCL E
The International Sculpture Center is a 501(c)3 nonprofit organization
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
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Executive Assistant Alyssa Brubaker
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ISC Headquarters
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Major Donors ($50,00099,999)
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_____________
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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
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International Sculpture Conferences
The ISCs International Sculpture Conferences gather sculpture enthusiasts
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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
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www.sculpture.org
The ISCs award-winning Web site <www.sculpture.org> is the most comprehensive
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Vernissage| wednesday, 1une 12, 2013| By lnvltatlon only
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Rech| Regen Prejects| Ren| Reyne|ds| R||s| Reac| Resen| S| 5age| 5CAI| 5che|b|er| 5ch|er| 5chtt|e|
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5ke|a| 5erene Westwater| 5ruth Magers| 5t. t|enne| 5taerk| 5tama| 5tandard (0s|e)| 5tarmach| 5te|n|
5tr|na| 5zwajcer| T| 1ay|er| 1eam| 1ega| 1em|en| 1hemas| 1schud|| 1ucc| Russe| V| van 0rseuw| Verna|
V|tam|n| W| Wadd|ngten Custet| Wa||ner| Washburn| We|ss| Werner| Wh|te Cube| We|ff| Z| 5usanne Zander|
1hemas Zander| Zene X| ZR0| Zw|rner| Statements| 4? Cana|| Be|j|ng Cemmune| Cambe||| Came|| Prest||
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sculpture
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14 Sculpture 32.4
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Faurschou Foundation
tcen|cen
Every Day Matters
||co| |one :!, .o:,
In |e ||c:||:e c| |.e|,oc, |||e,
Michel de Certeau holds out the
possibility that every human being
can do something each day that
defies institutional planning and
resists power structures. The works
collected here, many from places
dealing with political unrest or
socio- economic challenges, follow
that paradigm, using the elements
of everyday lifewhether materials,
objects, or situationsas a means
to maintain struggles, give space
to the repressed and marginalized,
and perpetuate the fleeting. Fea-
tured artists, including Adel
Abdessemed, Kader Attia, Shilpa
Gupta, Emily Jacir, Rivane Neuen-
schwander, Gabriel Orozco, and
Raqs Media Collective, combine cri-
tique, humorous gesture, and aes-
thetic impact in powerful state-
ments that materialize the complex-
ities of todays world and under-
score the importance of the most
commonplace actions and deci-
sions.
Tel: + 45 33 91 41 31
Web site <www.faurschou.com>
Grazer Kunstverein
6|c, /o|||c
Mierle Laderman Ukeles
||co| |c, :), .o:,
In 1969, Ukeless Manifesto for
Maintenance Art challenged
ingrained oppositions pitting art
against life, nature against culture,
and public against private while
proposing a new, socially based role
for artiststhe maintenance of
everyday life (sustain the change;
protect progress). Rather than con-
sider art as a means of develop-
ment akin to industrial innovation,
she posited creation as an act of
caretaking: artists could apply the
concept of transference to inspire
people to act as agents of change,
creating community involvement
and ecological transformation.
Since then, she has put this idea
to work, principally as artist-in-resi-
dence at the New York City Depart-
ment of Sanitation, where she has
produced a number of iconic inter-
ventions since 1977; in recent years,
she has spearheaded efforts to trans-
form the former Fresh Kills landfill
into an ecological park/artwork.
This show focuses on the early works
that first articulated her system of
values and revealed how listen[ing]
to the hum of living could offer a
viable alternative to advanced cul-
tures predatory strategy of skim-
ming off the top.
Tel: + 43 (0) 316 83 41 41
Web site
<www.grazerkunstverein.org>
Hamburger Kunsthalle
|cm|o|
Franz Erhard Walther
||co| |one .,, .o:,
Walther has created provocative
meditations on art as an act of
doing for more than 50 years. In
the early 1960s, following the exam-
ple of Fontana, Klein, Manzoni, and
Beuys, he pursued interaction and
liberation as a formal aesthetic,
seeking to conceive work out of an
action. This exhibition focuses on
fabric, wood, steel, and foam works
(created mostly in the 1960s and
70s) that employ straightforward
physical actsincluding pressing,
folding, unfolding, covering, and
uncoveringas sculptural princi-
ples. To honor the radical nature of
this approach, Walther (who taught
at the Hamburger Hochschule fr
bildende Knste for more than 30
years) will alter the installation sev-
eral times over the course of
the show, reconfiguring his ribbons,
rectangles, angles, and straps and
demonstrating their hands-on
characteristics as |cno|on|o:|e
(/:||cn ||e:e) and He|||o:|e
(Hc|| ||e:e).
Tel: + 49 (0) 40 428 131 200
Web site
<www.hamburger-kunsthalle.de>
Henry Moore Institute
|eeo, ||
Robert Filliou
||co| |one .,, .o:,
Filliou, who was closely associated
with Fluxus, used sculpture to
examine the nature of the creative
act. Like Duchamp, he believed in
the viewers role as an equal con-
tributor to the artwork; and like
Beuys, he understood art-making
as a continuous, universal process
deeply embedded in everyday life.
For Filliou, games, ordinary objects,
and role-playing scenarios could all
be sculpture. Aided by the devices
of time and chance, he destabilized
the fixed object and constructed his
work through multiple moments of
encounter. Unlike many subsequent
itinerary
Left: Shilpa Gupta, Threat, from
Every Day Matters. Bottom left:
Franz Erhard Walther, Fallstck
2 x 15. Above: Mierle Laderman
Ukeles, Art Interviews.
sculpture
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examples of conceptualism, Fillious
workfollowing Fouriers concept
of attractive passionsis premised
on play and joy. This exhibition, which
includes many key pieces, makes
the case for considering his multi-
part, participatory work as a crucial
factor in contemporary approaches
to sculpture.
Tel: + 44 (0) 113 246 7467
Web site
<www.henry-moore.ac.uk>
Kunsthallen Brandts
0oene, |enmc||
Phoebe Washburn
||co| |c, .o, .o:,
Washburn uses garbage, recycled
products, and organic materials to
create large-scale, self-contained
biotopes. Relying on intricately cal-
culated processes connecting
machines and organisms, her primi-
tive-looking constructions take on
a well-functioning, but also illogical,
life of their own. Scientifically accu-
rate, humorous, and somehow mon-
strous, these self-sustaining systems
go about their business within
massive accretions of stacked, bound,
and nailed elementsa sponta-
neous architecture that displays all
the haphazard perfection of a
beavers dam. Her new installation
at Brandts consists of an ecosystem
divided into two separate spaces.
In the apartment space, residents
cook, engage in activities of their
choice, and serve energy drinks to
visitors. Meanwhile, organs and
tubes process their wastewater and
carry it to small plant shoots growing
in a row of woven hospital beds.
Participants are essential to the sur-
vival of Washburns carefully bal-
anced ecologyvisitors booking half-
or full-day stays have the chance
to pitch in and leave their personal
mark on this unique experiment in
art-making.
Tel: + 45 6520 7001
Web site: <www.brandts.dk>
Kunsthaus Graz
6|c, /o|||c
Berlinde De Bruyckere
||co| |c, :., .o:,
Among contemporary artists, De
Bruyckere (who will represent Bel-
gium in this years Venice Biennale)
is unique in her ability to see beyond
the form of the human figure and
feel the body as unrelenting physical-
itymeat, tissue, and sinew. Not
since art imitated the miracle of the
word made flesh has a sculptor
created such fully enfleshed works.
De Bruyckere, not surprisingly, is fas-
cinated with medieval and early
Renaissance religious imagery (as
well as ancient mythology), and her
recent work finds a contemporary
idiom for the intense physical suffer-
ing that accompanies incarnation.
This show focuses on the transforma-
tions and contradictions at the heart
of her visionthe tensions that
haunt the body and its imagery as
sensuality blurs into compassion and
sins of the flesh shade into sins
against the flesh.
Tel: + 43 316/8017 9200
Web site <www.museum-
joanneum.at/de/kunsthaus>
Metropolitan Museum of Art
|eu 'c||
Sopheap Pich
||co| |one :o, .o:,
Pich, who lives and works in Phnom
Penh, uses rattan and bamboo to
construct open-weave, organic forms
inspired by human anatomy and
plant life. Solid and ethereal, repre-
sentational and abstract, his intricate
works combine his training as a
painter with the spatial conceptual-
ization of a sculptor, creating three-
dimensional objects from a profuse
interlacing of line (and shadow). The
choice of traditional materials and
processes acknowledges the integral
role of rattan and bamboo in South-
east Asia, fixing memories of culture
and place in a rapidly changing
world. This show, which is part of
New Yorks Season of Cambodia cele-
bration, features 10 large-scale
Above: Robert Filliou, Sans object.
Top right: Phoebe Washburn, Pres-
sure Drop for Richard Stands (a
history of one thing to another in
lemon-aidedness). Center right:
Berlinde De Bruyckere, Actaeon IV
(Miami). Right: Sopheap Pich,
Morning Glory.
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itinerary
16 Sculpture 32.4
works, ranging from lyrical evoca-
tions of the landscape to subtle
indictments of Khmer Rouge crimes
against the Cambodian people.
Tel: 212.535.7710
Web site <www.metmuseum.org>
Muse dArt Modern (MUDAM)
|o\em|co|
Thomas Hirschhorn
||co| |c, .o, .o:,
Although Hirschhorn claims that he
is not a political artist, his work takes
a deliberate political stance. His use
of everyday, humble materials makes
as strong a statement as his collabo-
rations with local youths and
frequent choice of art-inhospitable
non-sites, such as underpasses and
urban outskirts. For him, art is a
tool for getting to know the world
and encountering reality. Hc||o
/||c||, a monumental installation
originally produced for the 1999
Venice Biennale, presents a theoreti-
cally connected world that remains
intrinsically heterogeneous despite
its interwoven networks. Here, poor
materials become surrogates for
cheap labor and throw-away prod-
ucts, and connectivity is revealed as
a tool of global capitalism, a smoke
screen that blurs collisions into
encounters, confrontations into com-
munication, and isolation into com-
monality.
Tel: + 352 45 37 85-960
Web site <www.mudam.lu>
Museum of Art, Rhode Island
School of Design
||c.|oen:e
Alejandro Diaz
||co| |one ), .o:,
Like the Pop artists of a previous
generation, Diaz is drawn to com-
mercial design, cheap, ubiquitous
products, and the snappy language
of advertising. But he parts company
with his apolitical predecessors by
following the commercial into the
home, where it is reinterpreted and
re-used, and celebrating the prac-
tice of making do or using what-
ever is on hand to improvise an aes-
thetic object. Ranging from quaint
stereotypes of Mexican identity to
socio- economic and art world com-
mentary, his text-based works and
installations use language as a form
of cultural critique and resistance.
Conceptual and campy, his humor-
infused slogans and assemblages of
everyday junk demonstrate that art
can be all things at once: entertain-
ment, political activism, public
intervention, and free enterprise. This
show also includes a selection of his
cardboard signsNo Shoes, No
Shirt, Youre Probably Rich, In the
Future, Everyone Will be Famous for
$15.00hand-rendered bits of pro-
motion that demonstrate why
Apollo13Art.com called him a com-
bination of Warhol, Capote, Wilde,
and Chavez.
Tel: 401.454.6500
Web site <www.risdmuseum.org>
Museum Moderner Kunst
/|ennc
Franz West
||co| |c, .o, .o:,
West (who died last year) played a
critical role in redefining the possi-
bilities of sculpture as social and
environmental experience. Coming
out of a powerful 1960s performance
scene led by the Viennese Actionists,
he developed an early interest in
the potential of objects to trigger
an array of psychological states and
experiences. His unique manipula-
tions of found objects, papier-
mch, and furniture inspire bizarre
applications and scenarios. Though
fundamentally sculptural in their
construction, his works veer toward
the biomorphic and prosthetic, pos-
sessing an awkward beauty that
responds to both painterly abstrac-
tion and trash art. This exhibition
focuses on the curatorially minded
|cm||He||e, combinations and
recombinations of various categories
of work, including sculptural
objects, |c||o:|e, furniture, videos,
and drawings.
Tel: + 43-1-525 00-0
Web site <www.mumok.at>
Rockefeller Center
|eu 'c||
Ugo Rondinone
||co| |one ,, .o:,
Rondinone, who works primarily
within the context of installations
and environments, identifies time
as the central focus of his work. His
new project for the Public Art Fund
marks his third intervention into the
public life of New York after |e||,
'e', a neon sign that decorated the
faade of the New Museum from its
opening through 2010, and a 2007
work for Creative Time that intro-
duced the forms of two ancient
olive trees into the glass and con-
crete jungle of Lower Manhattan.
|omcn |c|o|e makes a similarly
stark contrastthis time through
coarse stone and archaizing repre-
Above: Thomas Hirschhorn, World
Airport. Top right: Alejandro Diaz,
Rubble Without a Cause. Right:
Franz West, Redundanz.
H
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sentation. These simple yet imposing
compositions of roughly cut and
stacked bluestone rise in figural
approximations that emphasize tow-
ering legs, massive torsos, and boul-
der-like heads. Archetypal in form,
mythic in scale, and visceral in char-
acter and impact, these nine colossi
condense lived time into an abstract
state formed of equal parts past and
present.
Tel: 212.980.4575
Web site
<www.publicartfund.org>
Rose Art Museum, Brandeis
University
Hc|||cm, |cc:|oe||
Walead Beshty
||co| |one ), .o:,
Beshtys photographs and sculptures
reconsider some of modern arts
fundamental premises while finding
value in the transitory nature of
daily life, especially its gaps, pauses,
and moments of in-betweenness.
While the photographs undertake
an astute inquiry into the history
and nature of the forms aesthetics
and techniques, the sculptures con-
sider more abstract questions of
time and valueparticularly the
shatterproof glass cubes fabricated
to fit into standard-size boxes and
shipped via FedEx (rather than pro-
fessional art shippers) from the
artists studio to exhibition venues.
In this collaboration with Rose
director Christopher Bedford, Beshty
uses the museum to structure two
parallel narratives: one based in the
intellectual rigors of analytical
abstraction, the other reveling in
unruly materialitya movement
from cathedral to cavefrom line
to stain. A mirror and glass floor
running through both spaces strad-
dles the dialectic, absorbing the
surrounding world and altering it
through reflection. Over time, as
the surface cracks through use, that
reflective imagery will break apart,
conjoining oppositions in a dense
new matrix of fractured forms and
jagged lines.
Tel: 781.736.3434
Web site
<www.brandeis.edu/rose>
Smart Museum of Art,
University of Chicago
t||:cc
The Sahmat Collective
||co| |one ), .o:,
Since the 1989 death of playwright,
actor, and activist Safdar Hashmi at
the hands of political thugs, Delhi-
based Sahmat (Hindi for in agree-
ment) has offered a platform for a
broad base of collaboratorsfrom
artists, scholars, and writers to
musicians, actors, activists, and rick-
shaw drivers. Fighting for free-
dom of expression in Indias cul-
ture wars, the collectives projects
engage in political and social debates
through a mix of high art and street
culture, driven by the belief that art
can propel change and culture can
reach across boundaries. Defined
in part by their consistent stance
against religious fundamentalism
and sectarianism, these collabora-
tions cut through class, caste, and
religious lines to draw a wide array
of participants. Stand-alone artworks
and ephemera from street-based
events, sit-ins, performances, and
conceptual exhibitions introduce
U.S. audiences to the impact that
this uniqueand controversial
collective has had on Indian society
and artistic practice.
Tel: 773.702.0200
Web site <http://
smartmuseum.uchicago.edu>
Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum
|eu 'c||
Danh Vo
||co| |c, .,, .o:,
For Vo, winner of the 2012 Hugo Boss
Prize, historywith its complex polit-
ical, religious, and cultural dynam-
icsis reflected in individual life sto-
ries, including his own. (His family
fled Vietnams postwar chaos in
1979.) His subtly humorous sculp-
tures combine found objects that
point back to the past while moving
forward into entirely new, unex-
pected meanings, connections, and
contexts. In 0mc c|em, for instance,
the gifts that his late grandmother
received from church and state when
she arrived in Germany in the
1980srefrigerator, television set,
washing machine, crucifix, and casi-
no passbuild a peculiar monument
to the mechanisms of integration.
Such mutable flotsam starts with the
personal, but then moves outward to
challenge the temptations of materi-
alist trappings as well as the most
basic definitions of identity. The
Top left: Prasanta Mukherjee,
Aftermath, from The Sahmat
Collective. Left: Walead Beshty,
Untitled. Above: Ugo Rondinone,
Human Nature.
sculpture
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18 Sculpture 32.4
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reverse happens in H| || ||0|||, a
gigantic replica of Lady Liberty that
undercuts monumentality and secu-
rity with fragility and precariousness,
dissecting the symbol of hope into
broken fragments of thin copper skin.
In Vos world, actualization and
anonymity, liberation and oppression,
myth and reality transcend opposi-
tion to become inseparable parts of
a more nuanced whole.
Tel: 212.423.3500
Web site <www.guggenheim.org>
Tensta Konstall
cnc, ueoen
The Society Without Qualities
||co| |c, .o, .o:,
The Society Without Qualities revis-
its some of the chief concerns of
1960s reformers, including education,
militancy, social welfare, and experi-
mental urban planning, while reinter-
preting those still-pressing issues in
light of current needs and mindsets.
Part historical exhibition, the show
picks up where Palle Nielsens leg-
endary Modellen at the Moderna
Museet left off. Beginning with the
pivotal year of 1968, the show works
its way through various art and archi-
tecture experiments from the 1970s
through the present day. Unlike its
predecessor, however, The Society
Without Qualities asks what it
would mean to proceed without a
model or image of the society to
come. Such freedom from received
ideas sounds wildly liberating, but
negation by itself poses a different
set of dangers (as the organizers of
Occupy discovered): lack of positive
visions and agendas might lead to
Deleuzes leftist ideal of thinking a lit-
tle further ahead, but it might also
result in disillusionment and the
acceptance of terms defined by out-
side influences. Ambivalence allowed
Robert Musils protagonist to escape
societal proscriptions, but what did
he build in their place?
Tel: + 46 8 36 07 63
Web site
<www.tenstakonsthall.se>
Van Abbemuseum
||no|c.en, ||e |e||e||cno
Sheela Gowda
||co| |c, .o, .o:,
Jewyo Rhii
||co| |c, :., .o:,
Initially trained as a painter, Gowda
turned to sculpture and installation
in the 1990s, using unconventional
materials to reference the social
contradictions and environmental
realities that define contemporary
Indian life. In her works, everyday
objects and mundane materials
including tar barrels, plumbing
pipes, doorjambs, thread, newspa-
pers, hair, incense, cow dung,
turmeric dye, and votive figurines
are transformed into rigorously
beautiful sculptural presences. But
a second reading, in which context
comes into play, undermines pure
formalism to reveal precise state-
ments, which are not always
benign. Sensual and unsettling, the
works featured in her 20-year survey,
Open Eye Policy, evoke some of
the darkest aspects of human expe-
rience, conjuring the insidious
nature of violence, overt and insidi-
ous in our psychic makeup.
Rhiis sprawling, makeshift sculp-
tures and installations stem from
personal, almost subliminal
responses to her immediate envi-
ronment. Made of familiar domestic
elements, these works encapsulate
what has become a commonplace
struggle to cope with an unman-
ageable, constantly changing world.
This show features a selection
of recent work, including a series
of site-specific pieces produced
during the artists four-month stay
in Eindhoven.
Tel: + 31 40 238 10 00
Web site
<http://vanabbemuseum.nl>
Above: Danh Vo, For Susanne. Top
right: Learning Site with Jaime Staple-
ton, Audible Dwelling 0.2, from Soci-
ety Without Qualities. Center right:
Sheela Gowda, Of All People. Right:
Jewyo Rhii, Walk to talk typewriter.
itinerary
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______________________
story, Inges Idees Little Red Riding Hood
and serves as a cautionary tale and an
allegory of the individuals complex rela-
tionship to society.
MtcuAt ftMokn Anu InoAk
0kAost
Han
Helsingr, Denmark
Last June, Copenhagens iconic statue of
the Little Mermaid got a little brother.
Located about 50 kilometers to the north,
in a small city known only as the setting
20 Sculpture 32.4
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commissions
Inos Iu
Little Red Riding Hood and
Potsdam, Germany
In 1942, in the Berlin suburb of Wannsee,
senior Nazi officials initiated the final
solution, leading to mass deportations
and ultimately, the Holocaust. Three years
later and only 10 kilometers to the west,
at Schlo Cecilienhof, Churchill, Stalin,
and Truman divided Europe, Germany, and
Berlin in a compromise among the victors
that remained intact for over 40 years.
Less than five kilometers south of the
midpoint between these two sites lies the
University of Potsdams Griebnitzsee
campus, home to the law, economics, and
social studies departments since 1991.
A short walk from the former border
between West Berlin and East Germany, the
Griebnitzsee campus has been occupied
by both Nazis and Communists. Inspired by
this checkered past, the Berlin-based collec-
tive Inges Idee has installed a public work
that uses one of the Brothers Grimms best-
known fairy tales to personify Germanys
conflicting self-image.
While researching the project, the mem-
bers of Inges Idee came across a 1930s fig-
urine of Little Red Riding Hood and the
wolf on eBay. They blew up the prototype
so that Red is a little over two meters tall
and removed the wolf, leaving just his paw
prints on the oversize pedestal and an eerie
indentation in the girls skirt. The main
concept is that there is a kind of void, a
place for argument, a vacancy, explains
Inges Idees Hans Hemmert, Little Red
Riding Hood is always associated with the
wicked wolf. Although the wolf is missing,
he is always in our imaginations. The
wolf becomes a metaphor for totalitarianism.
Inges Idee installed three identical fig-
ures of Little Red Riding Hood in different
locations around the campus. One stands in
front of a building that housed film studios
in the interwar period, the Nazi Red Cross
and one of Hitlers war offices during World
War II, and then an administrative academy
under the GDR. Another hides in a nearby
wooded area. The third figure stands in
front of a newer building. Like the Grimms
for Shakespeares Hamlet, Michael Elm-
green and Ingar Dragsets Han sits in
exactly the same position as his female
counterpart. Even the rock is the same
shape. The only immediately noticeable
differences between the two are gender
and materials.
Elmgreen and Dragset, who lived in
Copenhagen for years, likely chose stainless
commissions
Above: Inges Idee, Little Red Riding Hood and,
2011. Cast bronze, 3 elements, 230 x 140 x 100
cm. each.
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steel at least in part for practical reasons,
taking into consideration the numerous
graffiti incidents and decapitations of the
original bronze mermaid. A contemporary
take on that hundred-year-old icon, their
mermans polished, mirror-like qualities
add a poetic and reflective (in both senses
of the word) element to Hans longing gaze
out to the sea. A hidden hydraulic mecha-
nism makes his eyes blink unexpectedly
about once an hour.
Elmgreen and Dragset have been working
together ever since they met at a gay bar
in 1995. Their projects, though often play-
ful, tend toward political twists on
the notion of identity. In the original Hans
Christian Andersen story, the Little Mer-
maid goes through a series of changes that
she hides from others and hence must
bear herself. The isolation and loneliness
that result from keeping secrets are all too
familiar to the gay community. Through
the reinterpretation of a beloved Danish
story and landmark, Elmgreen and Dragset
have invested a traditional symbol with
contemporary relevance.
Svu AtAvt
Fountainhead
Walnut Creek, CA
California-based Seyed Alavi recently
installed a huge golden head in a 1970s-
style fountain in a small Bay Area city.
Half-submerged in the water, this literal
Fountainhead spouts water from the
top of what would be its skull, the place
commonly known as the soft spot or
fontanelthe French word for fountain.
In his research, Alavi discovered that in
both Western and Eastern traditions, this
spot is associated with knowledge. Athena,
the Greek goddess of wisdom, was born
by popping out of Zeuss head fully formed;
and in Indian philosophy, intuitive knowl-
edge is drawn from the crown chakra.
Creating visual puns with the words foun-
tain, head, and fountainhead, Alavi
set out to create a whimsical and surprising
addition to downtown Walnut Creek.
Then theres the other Fountainhead,
Ayn Rands infamous novel about a strug-
gling architect who manages to succeed
through obstinate perfectionism and the
egotistical manipulation of others. Pub-
lished 60 years ago, the novel still ruffles
feathers and provokes arguments about
the proper relationship of individualism
and collectivism. Alavi, for his part,
evades political discussions of his Foun-
tainhead. But in the context of the current
financial crisis and the works location in
front of a bank, local residents have inter-
preted the head as drowning in debt, or
conversely, as a golden personification of
banks on the verge of financial ruin. Still,
Alavi maintains that the piece is more
positive and playful: I feel that the point
that might connect this piece to the ideas
in [Rands] book is an interest in the ideal
of us as human beings, he explains,
however, contrary to the book, beyond
any socio-political contexts. Perhaps
Alavi is taking an approach not unlike that
of Andy Warhol. If an artist refuses to
direct interpretation, then viewers are free
to bring their own associations, and the
work becomes more powerful through the
process of self-discovery.
Elena Goukassian
Left: Seyed Alavi, Fountainhead, 2012. Fiberglass
and water, 6 x 11 x 11 ft. Above: Michael Elmgreen
and Ingar Dragset, Han, 2012. Polished stainless
steel with mechanical eye movements, 180 x 120
x 100 cm.
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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____________
Zurich, Switzerlands largest city, is expanding in all directions,
and new neighborhoods are springing up in old industrial zones.
One of these neighborhoods is Zurich-West. Companies such as
Escher Wyss AG once built their factories here, along with living
quarters for workers and their families. Today, Zurich-West is
undergoing a vigorous transformation as it mutates into a new
suburb, complete with steel and glass office complexes (including
Switzerlands tallest buildingthe 126-meter-high Primetower,
built by Swiss starchitects Gigon & Guyer), hotels, and luxury
homes. Academic institutions, including the Teachers Training
Center of Canton Zurich and Zurich University of the Arts, are also
moving in, drawn by the Lwenbru complex, museums, and
world-renowned galleries. Close by, the party mile features the
Shipyard Theater (Theater im Schiffbau), cinemas, countless bars,
and restaurants. Zurich-West, which will eventually house 40,000
residents, is still a massive construction site, where some parcels
of land remain bare brownfields and others serve as community
gardens. With this degree of polymorphism, the neighborhood was
destined to host a sculpture festival.
Art and the City, initiated last year by the city of Zurich, divid-
ed its emphasis equally between artworks and this dynamic part
of the city. Forty-three projects by Swiss and international artists
addressed the processes of urban and social transformation, entic-
ing viewers into an area unfamiliar even to natives. A project
by New York photographer Roe Ethridge defined the scope of the
undertaking. Ethridge made several journeys through Zurich-West,
documenting the areas new physical and social dimensions. His
architectural photos capture radical change in exciting ways: relics
of defunct chimneys and silos, as well as bridges and viaducts from
another age, confront shiny glass and cold steel, making the contra-
dictions of co-existence clear as well as poetic.
Artworks created specifically for the exhibition were scattered
throughout the city. Ethridges images, for instance, were displayed
at more than 350 sites. Ai Weiweis two white marble sofas sat on
the Paradeplatz, in Zurichs finance center. An oversized steel water
bucket by Subodh Gupta was located nearby. Most of the pieces,
however, were concentrated in Zurich-West.
On Escher-Wyss Platz, five monumentally scaled screwdriver
heads by the Cuban duo Los Carpinteros recalled the heyday of
heavy industry, when some of the largest and most modern work-
places in Switzerland operated here. Frank Stellas assemblage of
scrap metal, grates, beams, and colored sheet metal also referred
to the history of Zurich-West. There was a hint of nostalgia here,
acknowledging the ambivalent feelings that accompany radical
change and its irretrievable destruction of the past. Many works
provoked such discussions, including Arcangelo Sassolinos wildly
flailing and frightening excavators, which attempted to dig holes
in the ground. Paul McCarthys Apple Tree Boy Apple Tree Girl,
installed on an undeveloped site, and Vanessa Billys construction
Zurich: Art and the City
by Kathrin Frauenfelder
translated by Eileen Schramm
Top: Ai Weiwei, Sofa in White, 2011. Marble, 2 elements, 88 x 90 x 83 cm.
each. Center: Los Carpinteros, Catedrales, 2012. Brick, 5 elements, 450 x
150 x 150 cm. each. Left: Arcangelo Sassolino, Elisa, 2012. Mixed media,
500 x 800 x 600 cm.
22 Sculpture 32.4
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crane, which futilely attempted to lift the whole world, brought
societal excesses into focus.
On the other hand, Martin Creeds neon Everything is Going
to Be Alright, placed high up on the offices of a Swiss grocery
giant, offered consolation in the face of change and uncertainty.
And who will live in this city of the future? Perhaps people
like Vanessa, a five-meter-high, polished stainless steel figure
created by Swiss conceptual artist Alex Hanimann.
More subtle projects also awaited discovery, including Fran-
ziska Furters fragile sound piece, made of found materials and
mounted to a viaduct arch, and camouflaged surveillance cam-
eras by Taiyo Onorato and Nico Krebs, which spied on clouds,
cars, and people with equal interest. German conceptual artist
Charlotte Posenenske, who died in 1985, created sculptures that
can barely be distinguished from industrial products. Attached
to faades around Zurich-West, they were easily mistaken for air
ducts. As soon as one recognized them as artworks, however,
they sharpened perceptions of the surrounding environment.
Art and the City sought to remind us that the city is not just
a space to be understood visually, but also an aural space, an
olfactory space, a kinesthetic space, and a place of movement.
Performances and time-based sculptures enabled visitors to
experience the area with all of their senses. Hamish Fulton, for
instance, conducted an Art Walk in which 250 people divided
into two groups and marched single-file along the banks of the
Limmat river; starting from opposite directions, they walked
toward each other, crossed, and parted again. Swiss artist
Andreas Bosshard organized a public hunt for sound islands,
echo tunnels, and whisper niches.
Christoph Doswald, curator of Art and the City and leader
of Zurichs Workgroup for Art in Public Space, produced a
stimulating and multi-layered show focused on central issues
in urban planning today. Between the railroad tracks and the
Limmat, sculpture made questions of zoning, landscape, fallow
land, society, community, communication, economy, and archi-
tecture tangible.
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Above: Jrgen Drescher, House of Carpets, 2012. Aluminum, 220 x 350 x
190 cm. Top right: Oscar Tuazon, A Lamp, 2012. Hull, steel profile, con-
crete, and lamps, 472 x 472 x 472 cm. Right: Alex Hanimann, Vanessa,
2012. Stainless steel, 510 x 120 x 80 cm. Far right: Martin Creed, Every-
thing is Going to Be Alright, 1999/2012. White neon, 1.6 x 54.6 ft. Bottom
right: Paul McCarthy, Apple Tree Boy Apple Tree Girl, 2010. Aluminum,
boy: 525 x 208.3 x 189.2 cm.; girl: 546.1 x 290.8 x 213.4 cm.
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BY ROBERT PREECE
Color as
Material
TILMAN
A Conversation with
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Artitecture 1 / Cabane Communal, 2011. Lacquer
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26 Sculpture 32.4
Tilman is definitely an artists artist. I first encountered his two-dimensional,
non-objective work about 10 years ago while staying at the Center for Contem-
porary Non-Objective Art (CCNOA) in Brussels, where he was the artistic director.
I grew quite fond of his Tilman sandwicheslayered horizontal stacks of painted
materials that began his shift toward objects. Since then, he has moved into
three-dimensional constructions, a direction that has widened his pursuit
of color as a material and carrier of light by applying it across various structural
forms.
In the 27 years since Tilman graduated from art school in Munich, he has
exhibited at art spaces across Europe, the United States, Japan, New Zealand,
and Australia. He has had solo shows at the Kunstnernes Hus in Oslo, Dum Umen
C
esk Budejovice / House of Art in the Czech Republic, and Galerie Linard*
Langsdorff in Paris. Recently he has participated in group exhibitions at MoMA
PS1 and the Columna 1 / Lyon Biennial 2011 Satellite Program, and hes
shown numerous works at CCNOA. Tilman, who is very well networked in the
international non-objective art scene, has played a key role in the exhibition
and dissemination of such work.
(Foreground) Stack 14, 2006. Lac-
quer on MDF and Plexiglas, 60 x 60
x 12 cm. each; (background) Untitled,
2007. Adhesive foils, dimensions
variable.
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Robert Preece: After 16 years of pursuing
non-objective painting, why did you expand
your practice to include three-dimensional
work?
Tilman: From 1982, when I entered the
Akademie der Bildenden Knste Mnchen,
I focused exclusively on painting. Then,
in the mid-90s, I started to realize that I
could not manifest what I was looking for
namely, to create a platform to expose the
essential qualities of light and the inter-
pretation of light in our visual system
within the common means of painting.
I arrived at the understanding that one
cannot paint light itself, only an image of
it. I had to find another form that would
allow me to work with light and its natural
properties.
During the installation of one of my first
exhibitions in Europe, at CCNOA (2000), I
accidentally discovered a solution to my
problems. A two-part work, Transforms
(54.00/53.00), was leaning against the
wall, ready to be hung. I saw the light
floating over the different colored planes,
changing the tonalities. The movement of
light over time brought the whole assem-
blage to life, establishing a dialogue between
the work and the luminous qualities of its
surrounding space. The colored planes
started to breathe and to engage in the
realm of light.
RP: Could you give some details about your
art school training? Was it in the Bauhaus
model, with a year of projects devoted to
specific visual elements and principles of
design? How does your innovative work fit
into the notion of concept-based work?
T: My works are usually inspired by obser-
vations and visual experiences that catch
my eye and trigger associations. My eyes
find what I am looking for and initiate the
creative process. In the best cases, they find
what I am not looking for.
My art school training was actually very
limited. My teacher, Gnter Fruhtrunk,
died after my third semester and, from
then on, I was on my own. I remember
that we barely talked about art at our
weekly meetings; instead, we discussed
philosophy, psychology, politics, percep-
tion, and phenomenology. He gave me
the confidence and perspective to pursue
my decision to be an artist. The Bauhaus
Above: Untitled / For Marthe, 2005. Lacquer on MDF and Plexiglas, 251 x 120 x 20 cm. Below: 32.08 /
Little House of Colors, 2008. Lacquer on aluminum, 22 x 22 x 18 cm.
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model wasnt part of my training at the
Munich Academy, but thanks to my par-
ents, a lot of ideas inspired by Bauhaus
methods shaped my early upbringing and
education.
RP: How do you go about selecting your
colors and contrasts?
T: Color for me is a materialit performs
as a carrier of light, exposing its manifold
and subtle qualities. My selection isnt based
on a particular kind of color theory. I choose
colors intuitively, according to their indi-
vidual properties: I evaluate their volume
and possibility for absorption or reflection,
their luminous qualities and how they will
interact within a projected work of art. I
am looking for the interaction of primary
and secondary colors and subtle, sometimes
barely perceptible differences in color shades.
RP: How did you develop the horizontal
stacks that were exhibited at CCNOA and
the Sonja Roesch Gallery in Houston? Am
I the only person who calls them Tilman
sandwiches?
T: The idea to present the works horizon-
tally developed during the fabrication
process. More like painted objects than
paintings, these works challenged me to
find another way to present them rather
than simply mount them on the wall. The
horizontal presentation offered a different
perception of the painted surfaces, the
negative and positive spaces, the interac-
tion of light and shadow, and the overall
appearance of the object. The notion of
comparing the objects to sandwiches is
humorous, and Im afraid you arent the
only one who has done so.
RP: You have mentioned your interest in
light, but could you explain this in more
detail? Do you mean the actual light in a
space, whether natural or artificial, and in
relation to the walls and the color selec-
tion of the works?
T: I see colors as paint, as materials. Colors
are vehicles to transport lightnot only
the idea of light, but also its physical quality,
whether it be natural or artificial. In some
of my earlier, more two-dimensional works,
I placed two separate planes with different
tonalities on top of each other, then added
painted MDF in a different color at an angle
at the top, bottom, or side. This creates a
tilted colored plane, which acts as a reflector.
28 Sculpture 32.4
Above: Split, 2012. Lacquer on MDF, aluminum, and wood, 340 x 90 x 80 cm. Below: Tilman with Greet
Billet, Radio Vallebona / Transmission, 2013. Mixed media, detail of installation.
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It diffuses the light falling on the adjacent
plane, making the physical qualities visible.
Untitled / For Marthe (2005), which is
placed on the floor, exposes the object to
natural light in a different fashion.
RP: Are all of your colors customized? Do
you create them yourself?
T: Back when I used canvas and oil paint, I
mixed the colors myself using dry pigments.
Later, I began to work with acrylic paints
and various lacquers, which came pre-mixed
off the shelf. Now I use enamel, which I
can have custom-mixed at the store. Some-
times I bring color samples and have them
matched. I might choose brands that offer
a higher quality in terms of saturation or
finish, but I always buy them straight from
the shop and use them straight out of the
can, with no further manipulation.
RP: How did you go about making House
of Colors (2008)?
T: When I started making the painted stacks
around 2005, I became interested in their
structural character and how they func-
tioned as architectural objects. I wanted
to intensify the play of light and shadow,
so I began to create new objects. The use
of materials other than MDF allowed me
to expand on the idea to open and close
spaces within the objects and to explore
a different spatiality. These pieces came
to resemble miniature architectures, so I
titled them House of Colors. In 2008, I was
invited to participate in the Antwerp Sculp-
ture exhibition organized by MuHKA and
the Middelheim Museum, which gave me
my first opportunity to exhibit House of
Colors and produce it at a larger scale.
RP: Why do you work so much with MDF?
T: I like the quality of its surfaceit is
absolutely smooth, and I cannot attach
any associations to it. I also like the mate-
rials contradictions: on one hand, it radi-
ates an apparent solidity because of its
weight and volume; on the other, it has a
certain rawness and fragility. On the most
practical level, I like that it is available
around the world, which is very important
to my work process. I create objects and
site-specific pieces in locations far from my
studio. Wherever Ive realized projects over
the few last yearsEurope, the U.S., Aus-
tralia, or JapanIve never had a problem
finding MDF.
Above: Untitled / Temptation Island, 2007. Lacquer on MDF, tape recorder, soundtrack by Wolfgang
Glum, and mattresses, 440 x 240 x 480 cm. Below: Untitled / Val Duchesse, 2006. Lacquer on MDF,
251 x 132 x 52.5 cm.
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RP: What other materials do you like? Any that you really dont like?
T: In addition to MDF, I work with colored sheets of foam, plastic, glass, and aluminum.
Because I am not interested in applying the paints in a painterly way, I usually choose
materials that provide a perfectly smooth surface. I pay close attention to their inherent
qualitiesvolume, weight, and appearance. Often, I will use multiple materials within
one piece, which adds to the overall appearance and aura of the objectthe work becomes
more tactile due to the different qualities of the materials, their variations in hue, den-
sity, volume, and tonality. I always select the materials according to the requirements
of the individual work. In House of Colors
(2006) and in my most recent series, Flats
(2010/12), I used aluminum panels and
profiles (squared tubing). The available sizes
and shapes allow the light to pass through,
creating shadows and color interaction.
RP: Theres one thing that confuses me.
You create monochrome expanses,
yet you insist on hand-painting them. You
could outsource the labor, even use mate-
rials providing a more industrial finish, but
you dont. Is this Tilman the Romantic
Painter, or is there another reason?
T: I dont think that it is a question of being
Romantic. I could never have my works
fabricatedeven though its a common
practice, especially in the realm of Mini-
malism. I need the mental and physical
engagement with the materials and the
space in which I am working, whether it
be the studio, a gallery space, or when I
work in situ. This engagement stimulates
and emancipates my perceptions and
thoughts about making art or simply being
of this world. My entire body and mind
become the work, engaged in an essen-
tial experience. Only when this genuine
exchange takes place can I lend my associ-
ations to the work-in-progress.
RP: Could you explain Untitled / Tempta-
tion Island (2007)? It looks like a non-
objective love nest.
T: Basically, Untitled / Temptation Island
is an unfolded architectural space that
can function in numerous waysit invites
the viewer to participate and define the
space for his or her own self, whether as a
meeting ground, a room for contempla-
tion, or even a place to practice yoga. The
object is meant to provoke thought about
privacy and public exposure, or differing
qualities of interior or exterior space.
RP: In Brussels, you always seem to be sur-
rounded by art books and magazines. Whose
work do you really appreciate, and why?
T: Beautiful publications are my vice, espe-
cially when it comes to art books. My library
functions as an archive of related thoughts
a voyage of shared interests. As for the
artists whom I appreciate, thats hard to
say. I like works that trigger my perception
30 Sculpture 32.4
Artitecture 2 / Passage de Lumire, 2012. Lacquer
on MDF and wood, 1020 x 275 x 250 cm.
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and understanding of the world. For exam-
ple, many years ago, I learned about the
work of the late Brazilian artist Hlio Oiticica.
His utopian outlook on the world, his inno-
vative use of color and light, his engage-
ment with environmental art, and his
writings are of great interest for me in my
own understanding of artistic production.
RP: All of the furnishings in your Brussels
flat, except for some chairs, a mattress,
and a couch, are made of MDF, like your
works. Do you see that space almost as
an art installation?
T: No, the apartment is strictly my home.
Usually I build the furniture myself; I
dont think I have ever purchased a piece
of furniture in my life. Sure, there are great
designs out there, but I love to customize
objects for myselfthey may not always
be comfortable, but they are built to my
own volume, necessity, and spirit.
RP: Looking back at the key works in your
move to three dimensions, did you know
that they would be important when you
made them? How do you feel about them
now?
T: I dont think about the importance of a
piece while I am making it. It was only after
I created Transforms that I realized it was
a breakthrough. I had similar experiences
with F 218 B-BXL (2003), my first large spa-
tial installation in Brussels, and House of
Color (2008), which gave me the confidence
to create large-scale, outdoor pieces like
Artitecture 1 / Cabane Communal (2011) in
Chasse-sur-Rhone and Artitecture 2 / Passage
de Lumire (2012) in Braine-lAlleud.
RP: If you could choose just one art-making
or exhibiting experience to relive, which
one would that be?
T: I would love to relive them all again
the struggles and innovations are the
essence of being an artist. There is one
experience in particular, however, that
I should mention. In 2006, I had my first
large-scale presentation at the Kunstnernes
Hus in Oslo; the show was called Tilman:
Look Awry. I was given complete freedom
to do whatever I wanted. For one part of
the exhibition, I created a series of wall
works and floor objects like Untitled / Val
Duchesse (2006). For the second part, I created the site-specific installation N 802-B. It was
a huge project, measuring about 20 meters in length, 10 meters wide, and 4.5 meters
high, and it incorporated video, as well as sound produced by the Belgian composer
Aernoudt Jacobs. Viewers entered the installation and encountered the sensory phenom-
ena of shifting light and modulating sounds. I took huge risks. It was an enormous challenge
involving precision and planning, but in the end, it was extremely satisfying.
Robert Preece is a Contributing Editor for Sculpture and publisher of artdesigncafe.com.
Untitled / U.O.S. # 5, 2011. Lacquer on MDF and
wood, 320 x 120 x 120 cm.
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In a lush Japanese forest, adjacent to the Yokohama Zoo, Pat
Hoffies Harvester for Disappearing Dreams of Wildness invited
participants to trap and share the essence of captive animals
dreams. Gathered in remote funnels placed throughout the for-
est, these dreams, caught by viewers standing on a mechanism
powered by bodyweight, connected animals and humans through
the potent need for freedom. During a 30-year career, Hoffie has
thus evolved into a postmodern bruja, conjuring work along the
fluid boundaries between art, science, and magic, fact and fiction,
past, present, and future.
Much has been written about Hoffies work in terms of cross-
cultural, first and third world relations in the Asia Pacific region.
As an Australian artist dedicated to interpreting the transition
from cultural to capital economies and to shedding light on his-
tories of unfair labor practices and social injustice, she has suc-
ceeded in offering an aesthetic of challenge that wants to antago-
nize and rebuild connections between art and life.
1
Just as impor-
tant is the role of her collaborations in providing pathways for
reintroducing disconnected elements of the past back into pre-
sent parlance, thus reordering hierarchies of art history and cul-
tural interaction. Her ability to create alternate worlds woven
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Sublime Impossible
Opposite and above: Disastabah, 201112.
Mixed media, dimensions variable.
BY CAROL SCHWARTZMAN
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from collective memory, contemporary
tropes, and emotional longing, combined
with wit, irony, and forceful visuality, makes
her inquiry anomalousall the better to
create a dream-world in order to discover
the features of the real world we think we
inhabit.
2
Hoffie considers it a badge of honor that
a willful mistranslation of accepted canons
characterizes much Australian art, sup-
porting a community of eccentric, progres-
sive contrarians creating in many fields. The
Australian version of Modernism bypasses
most of the purity and formalism of Green-
bergian aesthetics as it reigned in the U.S.
because the type of exclusivity pursued by
Greenberg doesnt appeal to the famous
Australian taciturnity [that] would seem to
embody a profound skepticism about gen-
eralized explanations of any kind.
3
Austra-
lian artists have traveled and worked in
Europe, the U.S., and in Asia. Some returned,
others became ex-pats, but on the whole,
they have fashioned their own unique jour-
ney through the maze of 20th-century art
movements, Eastern and Western.
While the Australian art world has been
an active, though distant, participant
in international dialogue, globalization
has brought the rest of the country face
to face with the past, as well as with the
need to develop a voice within the world
community.
In Hoffies universe, the Euclidean is just
another system of organization, and the
non-linear holds sway. By destabilizing the
sequential and decentralizing normative
uses of spaceall within a mode of play
that becomes serious, but freed from making
a claim[of] authoritative completeness
Hoffie has most recently pursued issues
such as the origin of knowledge and the
formation of cultural identity.
4
The seduc-
tion implied by Hoffies workand it is
seductiveis not a re-aggregation of com-
munity or self, but the possibility of creating
an engaged state of being that will satisfy
that longing, or hope. Any stasis is denied:
movement, chaos, and imaginative play
are the sustaining attributes chased by
Hoffiefor herself, her collaborators, and
her audience.
WindWells: Channeling and Divining
(2010), which brought together a huge
group of people and resources from the
State Library of Queensland, culminated
34 Sculpture 32.4
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WindWells: Channeling and Divining, 2010.
Mixed media, detail of installation.
Troop Drill, 2009. Mixed media, detail of instal-
lation/performance.
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in a site-specific installation celebrating the
states use of windmills to access water. An
exploration of magic, 19th-century spiritu-
alism, and showmanship in colonial Aus-
tralia, the installation presented the physi-
cal result of research undertaken at the
librarys archives. Set in a darkened room
the size of a small airplane hangar, pro-
jected archival film footage showed factory
workers fabricating windmills. Hoffie also
installed a full-size windmill, gramophone-
like amplification bells connected by velvet-
covered pipes, arcing Jacobs ladders, and
cylindrical wells consisting of hundreds
of stacked, fanned-out books. Water divin-
ers spun circles on refitted turntables, while
a soundscape of gears and resonating gui-
tar tones filled the room, and viewers
silhouettes were flung against clouds that
evolved cinematically on the walls, evoking
departed spirits. In referencing historical
public figures who served as conduits
between the believable and the bizarre
(including Professor J.H. Pepper, who played
the first gramophone in Queensland before
a paying audience and who attempted
cloud-seeding with dynamite), Hoffie set
up a metaphorical mirror questioning
assumptions about truth and fiction, as
well as the norms that fall somewhere
between the two on the spectrum of belief.
She also underscored the ironic fact that
indigenous cultures have long held the
secret to finding waterand that such
knowledge was overlooked or destroyed
to support a different cultural knowledge
and identity.
Planet Ueno: a Cross-Cultural Exchange
Project, Hoffies 2009 collaboration with
Queensland College of Art and Geidai Univer-
sity of the Arts in Tokyo, sought to actively
cultivatemistranslations as fertile places
for play and imaginative interpretation.
5
Acting on the notion that gaps in under-
standing are an inevitable part of any
cross-cultural or transnational experience,
Japanese art students explored the streets
of Tokyos Ueno district, treating the expe-
rience as if it were a first encounter with
a new world.
6
During their reconnaissance,
they documented their findings against a
checklist of anthropological touchstones
in an effort to revisit the empirical meth-
ods of information gathering employed
by colonialism and ethnography. As a serio-
comic meeting with the Other, Planet
Ueno produced responsive artworks out-
side the categories of normal production,
including a slice of dried fish (which par-
ticipants mistook for a piece of beautifully
carved cedar) and a series of images docu-
menting structures at a Shinto shrine that
appeared to be centuries old, but were
recent additions built in an effort to pass
down traditional values of craftsmanship,
order, and place. A visit to a graveyard
resulted in a soft fabric sculpture of a grave
marker, which led to a comparison between
Eastern and Western practices, shocking
Japanese participants when they learned
that not all cultures ritually visit and honor
dead ancestors on an annual basis.
Ultimately, for Hoffie, all art-making
brings you home.
7
But instilling a sense
of magic while simultaneously confronting
the dark side of Australias past is no easy
feat. Her 2009 performance at Fort Lytton,
Troop Drill, was staged at dusk on the mouth
of the Brisbane River. Built in 1881 and
used for the defense of Brisbane until the
end of World War II, the fort occupies
a site with a complicated history. Once
a traditional crossing for Aboriginal inhabi-
tants, then the mustering ground for
Queenslands far-flung light brigade regi-
ments, it is now a national park. The con-
crete structures pentagonal plan creates
a natural, grass-floored amphitheater, and
Hoffie used this space to choreograph the
BABELproJEKT (detail), 2010. Mixed media,
dimensions variable.
Harvester for Disappearing Dreams of Wild-
ness, 2009. Mixed media, detail of installa-
tion.
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thundering entrance of 16 horses, accom-
panied by the sounds of didgeridoo, bag-
pipe, and electric guitar. As hundreds of
spectators watched the horses and riders
move through their paces, archival footage
of the Australian Light Brigade was pro-
jected into the live performance, creating
a visceral, eerie meeting of past and pre-
sent redolent with the anarchy of 60s Hap-
penings. Nostalgia was not the goal: Hoffie
sought to use the power and bulk of the
animals, the anachronism of a leisure-time
reenactment of defense training, and the
sites potent aura to give participants
a connection to place: So many aspects
of the site are powerfulthe indigenous
heritage, the idea of a ruin in a place like
Queensland, the reminder of the futility
of keeping out anythingthe fact that
things surface many years after a war that
somehow are conducive to community.
8
Hoffies kinetic works draw an immediate
connection to the sculptures of Jean Tinguely.
But while Tinguelys work assumes a cool,
Modernist stance of dry wit and intellectual
remove, Hoffies constructions resonate with
warmth and humanitythough a strong
dose of steampunk sets them in an ambigu-
ous, almost fantastic timeframe that
remains difficult to pin down. Madame
Illuminata Cracks Phantasmagorical Arm-
chair Invention for an Ecologically
Sustainable Future (2008), fabricated from
discarded gym equipment and old violins,
was designed and built to endlessly saw
a tune. This Rube Goldberg-like contraption
sat before a slideshow of hybridized Con-
structivist graphics morphed with 19th- and
early 20th- century archival photographs
of indentured laborers (most of whom were
blackbirded or kidnapped) working Aus-
tralian sugar cane fields. Since Hoffies
work comments on leisure activities as
an outgrowth of free time, it has been
described by Australians as bolshy
partially because of its direct take on
injustice, but mostly because it stands out
from the crowd, not pulling any punches
in a culture that holds deep respect for
the polite demur from strong, publicly
stated opinion when the desires of the
majority are openly questioned.
Carnivale Extremis (2010) and fugue for
submerged memories (2010) were installed
at the Woodford Folk Festival as part
of the Utopia/Dystopia/Disturbia visual
arts and performance project curated by
Hoffie and others. These kinetic works cel-
ebrated Bakhtins carnivalesque ethos, the
former with acrobatic medieval imagery
of demons, animals, and angels, the lat-
ter mysteriously summoning up a fugue-
state or refuge in an in-between realm
between the rational world and a dream.
9
fugue consisted of two partially submerged
pianos fitted with insect-like appendages
that continuously clacked out a mournful
tune; scattered across the pond, the strings
of 32 violins vibrated in the wind. At the
festivals end, fugue was set on fire and
36 Sculpture 32.4
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you gotta love it, 201213. Carved wood,
detail of installation.
Madame Illuminata Cracks Phantasmagorical
Armchair Invention for an Ecologically Sustain-
able Future (detail), 2008. Mixed media, dimen-
sions variable.
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blazed on the waters surface before even-
tually sinking.
In Hoffies installations, space is crossed
and felt through physical structure, narra-
tive, and imagination. The participants
journey not only resembles the multi-layered
processes of life, but also activates
the installation, providing the energy nec-
essary to transform the coordinates set
up by the artist into a whole, turning the
historical context of the work into what
Paul Carter calls a spatial history in which
events unfold, rather than a diorama to be
viewed.
Hoffie offers no empirical cause-and-
effect rationale: her work combines the
intellectual and the formal, the feral
and the poetic. Consistently rebellious,
refreshing, and thought-provoking, it tack-
les what it really means to be alive today
to synthesize the vast deluge of interde-
pendent bits of media, imagery, informa-
tion, and cultures and to come to terms
with an understanding of community and
ones place within it.
Hoffie has recently installed a major
sculptural work, Disastabah, at the Wood-
ford Folk Festival and War Ears at the Swell
Sculpture Festival. you gotta love it,
her January 2013 installation at Artspace
in Sydney, once again saw her stirring
the pot. She commissioned Balinese wood
carvers to replicate a series of crude bumper
stickers popular with Aussie tourists vaca-
tioning in Bali. Phrases such as Harden
Up Princess were combined with stereo-
typical tourist imagery, while Fuck Off
Were Full was accompaned by an emu and
a kangaroo, Australias official animals.
Here, the desirability of traditional craft
was transformed into ugly truth, and
faux souvenirs became complex objects
embodying the inevitable missteps of
cultural exchange.
Carol Schwartzman is a writer living near
Brisbane in Queensland, Australia.
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War Ears, 2011. Mixed media, dimensions
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Notes
1
Sally Butler, Exploiting the Avant-Garde, in Pat Hoffie: Fully Exploited Labour, exhibition catalogue, (The University of Queensland Art Museum, 2008), p. 104.
2
Paul Feyerabend, Against Method (London: Verso, 1975), p. 32.
3
Paul Carter, The Road to Botany Bay: An Exploration of Landscape and History (London: Faber and Faber, 1987), p. 294.
4
Feyerabend, op. cit., p. 51.
5
Pat Hoffie, Planet Ueno: Musings from a Cross Cultural Exchange Project, exhibition catalogue, (Griffith University, Queensland College of Art, 2009), p. 19.
6
Ibid., p. 21.
7
Conversation with the artist, 2011.
8
Ibid.
9
Pat Hoffie, Utopia/Dystopia/Disturbia, exhibition catalogue, (Griffith University, Queensland College of Art, 2010), p. 36.
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Making the Bridge Breathe
Wave Arbor, 2011. Perforated
anodized aluminum, painted
steel, up-lights, and solar-
powered LEDs, 25 x 88 x 25 ft.
Work installed at Long Bridge
Park, Arlington, VA.
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Douglas Hollis
A Conversation with
BY CATHRYN KELLER
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Douglas Holliss three San Francisco studio spaces reflect the dimensions of his increas-
ingly complex, collaborative public art. A square room dominated by computer monitors
could be an architects office. The small downstairs shop is neatly gridded with what used
to be familiar hand tools. The outdoor studioin a quintessentially San Francisco garden
with native plants, stepped terraces, and the sounds of wind, birds, and a foghorn
holds the key, revealing the spirit, energies, and elements that animate Holliss subtle
yet powerful work.
His four-decade career has suddenly become very busy. In a move that perhaps parallels
Holliss own staying power and new visibility, Aeolian Harp (1976), which was originally
installed high above the entrance to San Franciscos Exploratorium, is being relocated
(along with the hands-on science museum) to the Embarcadero, where it will perch on
a bridgea more accessible site that will allow it to be seen as well as heard.
On the Virginia side of the Potomac River, two miles south of the National Mall, Hollis
is at work on the second of two structures for Long Bridge Park. Arlington County admin-
istrators were so pleased with his wind-activated, steel and aluminum Wave Arbor (2011)
that they invited him back and asked that
his wife, sculptor Anna Valentina Murch,
collaborate with him on the next phase.
The couple is also working on the lighting
design for a light-rail bridge in Portland, Ore-
gon, that will respond to the water below.
Holliss work is very much about making
places rather than objects. He and Murch
work with fields of experience rather than
objects per se, combining a sequence
of elements to make a multi-sensory experi-
ence. Such multi-sensory work requires a
multidisciplinary approach. Hollis, who was
born in Michigan in 1948, has worked with
artists and innovators in many fieldsfrom
Ann Arbors interdisciplinary ONCE Group
to visionary Frank Oppenheimer and ber-
landscape architect George Hargreaves.
After art school at the University of Michi-
gan and a few years in New York, Hollis
landed in Berkeley, maintaining connec-
tions with the avant-garde musicians around
the Center for Contemporary Music at near-
by Mills College.
Holliss work can easily be missed unless
we do what it invites us to do: tune in.
It doesnt so much assert itself as amplify
what is already there, helping us to focus
on sound, wind, light, shadow, water, air,
and our own breath. Amplification is key.
In common with artistic and meditative
process, his work is about perception and
awarenessof the external environment,
inner experience, boundaries, membranes,
and possibilities for transcendence.
Cathryn Keller: You have worked with sound
as a way to shape space and perception for
a long time. How did you get started?
Douglas Hollis: I started out at the Explora-
torium as an artist-in-residence in the mid-
70s, collaborating with physicists and
people in the shops. Thats when I devel-
oped the first Aeolian Harp (1976). I was
very interested in the power of sound, how
it could be architectural, how you could
create space with it, so that you have a
sense that youre within a kind of volume.
I also built the first wind organ there. The
two pieces are complementaryvisually
40 Sculpture 32.4
A Sound Garden, 1983. Painted steel, anodized
aluminum, brick, and gravel, steel towers: 21 ft.
high. Work installed at NOAA, Seattle.
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minimal, but musical. With the Explorato-
rium moving to a new space, Im thrilled
that the harp will be mounted on a pedes-
trian bridge between two piers. People can
get closer to it, listen to it in more intimate
ways.
CK: You are creating a second structure for
Long Bridge Park in Virginia, located between
the Pentagon and Reagan National Airport.
What are the challenges of working at a
site surrounded by highways, high-rises,
railroad tracks, and a waterfowl sanctuary?
DH: One challenge was competition from
traffic sounds. With planes flying into
National Airport every 2.5 minutes, I thought
there was enough sound out there, so
motion seemed like a better approach. Wave
Arbor (2011) turned out incredibly well.
Its become an icon for the park. The new
piece, Cloud Grove, will be three tree-
like structures animated by a system of
embedded fog nozzles. It will be on a
changing program and will talk about water
in a different way than the rest of the new
Aquatics Center. It will have an interactive
relationship with the park, producing evaporative cooling, which is quite pragmatic. It
also creates a wonderful phenomenon, a cloud-like mist in the trees. As with many of
my projects, I want the work to have an interactive quality. It becomes a lure that will
draw people into the park.
CK: And in Oregon, you plan to make a bridge breathe?
DH: We are dynamically lighting the Portland-Milwaukie Light Rail Bridge. Its a cable-
stayed bridge, and were lighting the cables, which are about a foot in diameter. Whats
essential to the concept is that were getting data from the river, monitoring what the
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Above: Listening Vessels, 2008. Limestone, 2 ele-
ments, 8 x 3 ft. each. Right: Mistree, 2008. Stain-
less steel, water, 80 mist nozzles, and up-lights,
16 x 28 ft. Both works installed at Discovery Green
Park, Houston.
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river is doing in terms of flow and tidal levels. The data will be
transformed through an algorithm into a set of instructions, so
the lighting will change in response to what the river is doing.
Theres a relationship between the bridge and the river, a kind of
conversation. The bridge will almost look like its breathing. Its a
poetic way of describing the feeling we want it to have. It will be
a soft, subtle, breath-like gesture.
CK: What are your artistic goals? You have spoken about creating
oases, and you have described your ambition for your work as
making good vessels.
DH: Its the same thing. For years, Ive been trying to make places
where people can pause, collect themselves and get centered, and
be able to cope with the world a little better. I like working in the
public realm because I feel that my work contributes to better
places that alter your state of mind, hopefully for the better.
The good vessel idea has to do with the notion of entering some-
thingyoure not standing looking at something, youre actually
within it. That phrase occurred when we did a tidal clock piece in
Port Townsend, Washington. We wanted it to age beautifully, to
accrete things, so it became a kind of armature for natural pro-
cesses, visually and sonically. It also became a habitatstorks
love to go fishing there.
CK: Oasis, your Brea project under construction in Orange County,
references Native American cultural landscapes. Does this acknowl-
edge the time that you spent, beginning as a teenager, living with
Native Americans in Oklahoma?
DH: Its an attitude thats pretty deeply embedded in me, an under-
standing that I will never really understand that ancient mind.
Its a different take on how the world is put together, your rela-
tionship to it, so I just follow it through on how I think about
making art.
CK: Where is the body in or in relation to your work? You talk
about people as participants, or walkers, not viewers.
DH: I try to make things that are multi-sensory. A lot of the pieces
obviously hold their ground, but at the same time, theyre like
telltales, talking about something beyond themselves, something
observable through one or more of the sensesthe flow of the
wind or the flow of water, different expressions of those elements.
It makes one more aware of these ephemeral or sometimes almost
invisible things that have influence on us. It has to do with a
mental space. We are trying to create a more aware relationship
between ourselves and natural forces.
CK: Could you explain how this idea works, perhaps in the context
of A Sound Garden (1983)? This work, which is installed at NOAAs
Western Regional Center in Seattle, resulted from an unusual
cooperation, as you called it, with the architects and four other
artists (Siah Armajani, Scott Burton, Martin Puryear, and George
Trakas).
DH: I really love A Sound Garden (1983), which is on Lake Washing-
ton. It was one of my first permanent commissions and my first
flowing, orchestrated sound structure. It had to do with shaping
the land, making a pathway that was somewhat sonic, making
you aware of your own walking, of your motion up the incline. It
was about proxemics and how you begin to perceive certain things
42 Sculpture 32.4
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Douglas Hollis with Anna Valentina Murch, Waterscape, 2005. Boulders, water,
granite, stainless steel, and fog nozzles, 4000 sq. ft. Work installed at the San
Jose Civic Center, CA.
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either visually or sonically. You enter a field
of 12 wind organ towers, with a choreo-
graphic component, so it tracks the wind
and maximizes the sound it can produce. At
times, the gray towers almost disappear
against the Seattle sky, but the pipes, which
are anodized aluminum, tend to capture
light, so you see them up there in the air,
moving, without noticing the structures
that hold them up. The band Soundgarden
named itself after that piece.
CK: Who are your artistic and creative
influences?
DH: Ive admired Robert Irwin for a long
time, as well as the Light and Space people
in generalJames Turrell and Eric Orr, and
Larry Bell and Maria Nordman. And, of
course, Leonardo. In graduate school in the
late 60s, I did environmental stuff. I was
interested in Land Art when it started hap-
pening and started doing what became
known as site-specific work at about the
same time as Mary Miss and George Trakas.
It started to morph into public art. There
really wasnt something called public art
prior to that, although GSA had its sculp-
ture program. Herbert Bayer, who came
out of the Bauhaus and did earthworks,
was one of the early people you dont hear
about much.
After art school, when I first moved out
here, I got involved with the Center for Con-
temporary Music at Mills College. I met a
lot of the students and composers, including
Max Neuhaus, Bill Fontana, Michael Brew-
ster, and Liz Phillips, and started thinking
about sound as a medium for sculpture. Id
been around the ONCE Group and experi-
mental theater in Ann Arbor, so I was pretty
comfortable with cross-disciplinary thinking.
My wife Anna is a professor of sculpture at
Mills, so we are still closely associated with
the place.
CK: You seem to have been involved in cre-
ative collaborations for about as long as
you have been an artist, and your work
process today resembles that of an archi-
tect. Do you ever not collaborate?
DH: At this scale, there are always other
people involved, whether Im working as a
design team member or as an artist asso-
ciated with the project. Ive done this pretty
much my whole career. For example, in
Arlington, the landscape architecture firm
Hargreaves Associates designed the park. Ive worked with George Hargreaves since the early
1980s. With the architect Mark Mack, we formed a team to go in for the design of an 18-
acre section of Candlestick Parkthe first urban state park in California. We designed the
whole thing collaboratively. We built a six-by-six-foot sandbox in Georges studio so that all
three of us could work on three-dimensional ideas at the same time, instead of drawing at
each other the way architects do. We didnt actually get in it. We used it to do quick dia-
grammatic sketches that we could photograph before going on to the next thing. It was
very fluid, a more relaxed way of working than just drawing.
CK: What are the secrets for successful creative collaboration with your spouse?
DH: We each have our own projects, and we do some projects together. We have a similar
sensibility about place-making and environment, engaging the body, and working with nat-
ural phenomena. I think we complement each others abilities.
CK: Is yours a new kind of studio? Do you still draw?
DH: Its a 21st-century studio. I do a lot of work on the computermodeling and prelimi-
nary working drawings. Im a maker, so I get bored with too much computer. I have some
apprentices from Berkeley periodically, students who usually go into a firm to learn the
ropes, but the weird ones come to me, the ones who like to build things.
Cathryn Keller writes about sculpture, photography, and yoga.
Douglas Hollis with The Berger Partnership, ASLA, Waterworks (detail), 2005. Black granite, bronze, and
water, cone: 14 ft. high. Work installed at Cal Anderson Park, Seattle.
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Public Sculpture
in an Age of
Diminishing Resources
BY LISA PAUL STREITFELD
6ttrr 6Aktn
A Conversation with
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To enter Cliff Gartens Venice studio is to encounter a
visual dialectic of public and private that speaks to our
times. On one wall is Being and Home, an impressive
suite of 10 independent sculptures depicting living
creatures, all meticulously rendered in different mate-
rials; on the other wall are images of the artists large-
scale, collaborative public projects, designed with his
three-person team.
Being and Home is the first figurative work that Gar-
ten has completed in 15 years of public art. The title
identifies a quest to manifest a philosophy of sculpture
in an age of diminishing resources. However personal
the process, the installation draws the observer into
more universal concerns, speaking to the destruction
of nature, even as it recalls the ancient practice of
sacred geometry as a means of instilling manmade
forms with the harmonic vibrations of nature.
Though Gartens public and private works appear
widely divergent, they are corollaries, exploring simi-
lar ideas and concerns. His approach to public sculp-
ture seeks to fuse functional requirement with aesthetic
desire. By connecting people to places through design,
social history, and ecology, his public sculptures locate
the latent potential within the public realm.
Lisa Paul Streitfeld: Rudolf Steiners book Bees is sitting
on your studio table. What does your sculpture draw
most from his writing?
Cliff Garten: The thing I love about Steiner is that you
may not get a real scientific explanation, but you get
an energetic explanation for the science. And even
though it isnt exactly right, it is truth.
LS: The structure of the beehive is based on the hexa-
gon, which symbolizes harmony in nature, yet this form
is collapsing in Being and Home. Did you study bee-
hives as part of your process?
CG: I started breeding bees.
LS: All of these creaturesthe bee, the snail, the ant
are threatened by environmental destruction. Here,
you transform them into icons through the imagina-
tive use of vastly different materials.
CG: Materiality is the point of sculpturethat is really
crucial. What I am trying to do is to create transposi-
tion from one material to another. So, the wood is
iron and the termite is wood. The snail shell is soft
instead of hard. The ant is made of thousands of ball
bearings that actually refer to its activity.
LS: What is the history behind this process?
CG: When I was studying with Dale Chihuly, I worked in
ceramics, and he said: If you are an artist, you are able
to work with any material. I thought, Oh I get it. Were
not just making craft here, were making art. What
I always used to tell my students is that through the
mastery of one material, all others become available
because if you master a process, then you understand process. I had to learn
about polyester resin to do these, which was a new material for me, and
beeswax is relatively new.
LS: There is a strange in-between quality in this work that sets the viewer
on edge.
CG: Everything is a little off. A lot of this is like a childrens story because of my
daughter reading fairy tales. There is the busy bee, industrious ant, and
slow snail. But there is a subtextthat the stories we tell ourselves about
nature and the archetypes of these creatures are not at all what is happening
now. The big shifts happening in nature are really sinister. And so, when you
start to really look at the ant, and you realize that its made of 20,000 ball
bearings, it gets you to think about that. But it still retains that storybook
quality, that child-like image that we all know. It fascinates me to watch people
looking at it because I think the work has a lot of levels of entry.
Opposite: Being and Home, 201213. Mixed media, installation view. Above: Black Spiral
Dream, 2011. Cast bronze, earth, stones, and fescue, 19.17 x 3 x 5.92 ft. Work installed at
Moffett Towers, Sunnyvale, CA. Below: Tower II, 2012. Stainless steel and programmable
LED lights, 39 x 5 ft. Work installed in Dallas.
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LS: As the film American Empire pointed out, even scientists cant
tell the difference between Monsanto seeds and natural seeds. Your
works comment on that border between the manufactured and
the natural, reinforcing that we no longer know where one ends
and the other begins. We dont really know anymore what is real
and what is being manipulated.
CG: Well, Im sure it is all being manipulated. I like to backpack and
pride myself on going out alone. And then, I started thinking about
what a national forest is and what goes on there. All the animals
are tagged. They know how many bears are there.
LS: So, this work originates from your relationship to nature and
personal observation.
CG: In some ways, it has a lot to do with living in Los Angeles. There
is nothing here that isnt manipulated, so you become aware in
a kind of hyper-real way. There is also the constant threat of mul-
tiple disasters. The most uncomfortable is the fact that there is no
water here.
LS: Do you think that art is doing enough to focus on this impending
disaster?
CG: Everyone is thinking about it. Sculpture has been thinking about
it since the early 80s. In many ways, this is part of Smithsons
unfinished project, and many artists have touched on it. Its what
is up in the human consciousness. What people dont understand
about all of these issues surrounding global warming is that they
are not scientific issuesthey are human rights issues: we have
a right, a responsibility to care for our environment.
The tragedy is that we set everything up to work so that as soon
as we try to step out of business as usual, the economy collapses.
We are afraid to stop it. Our altering and polluting of the earth is
how we set it up, what the economy depends on to keep going. I
work in the public sphere, so I can tell you that, in terms of legis-
lating green economic activity in the building professions, right
now we are at the equivalent of 1965 with civil rights: we know
that we have to do it, but it continues to be a painful process, and
you can see how slowly things change.
LS: At least it is changing.
CG: We need that kind of political will to make people change their
behavior. There is a lot of lip service paid to making things green
or sustainable in public art and architecture. There are two sides
to function or sustainability in the environment. One is how things
work and the kind of resources we use to build them. And the
other is the way they look. I dont think things are really sustain-
able unless they are built with a certain amount of integrity and
made to last. Since the 50s our culture has been building with
the understanding that we just have to get it done and then we
can throw it away. That attitude has escalated to the point where
we dont even try to fix anything anymore. Its scary.
My public work is about conditioning public space and activity
in a particular way that holds and contains you to create interest
in the public realmand, I daresay, beauty in the public realm
and conditions it in a way that creates a place with an identity that
you can understand, that is legible, where the sculpture becomes
46 Sculpture 32.4
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Top left: The Great Ellipse, 2009. Granite, earth, and plantings, 165 x 242 ft.
Work installed at Moffet Towers, Sunnyvale, CA. Left: Baldwin Hills Gateway,
2012. Anodized aluminum, 10 x 35 x 150 ft. Work installed at Baldwin Hills
Conservancy, L.A. Above: Bullet, 2012. Aluminum and programmable LED light-
ing, 20 x 6 x 9 ft. 1 of 2 works at the Denver Crime Lab, CO.
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part of the functioning public realm. This is why I am
so interested in infrastructure. In a time of diminishing
resources, what could be better than building our infra-
structure in a way that informs people about resources?
What I am arguing is that we build beautifully, with
an intentionality toward scarcity. The public realm was
built by engineers after World War II, when we had a
booming economy and a myth about progress. The last
time people really paid attention to the public realm
in this country at a national level was with the WPA,
which was really a result of the Great Depression. I dont
know if that type of public will is possible in this day
and age though, because everything is so fragmented.
At that historical moment, people believed in their polit-
ical leaders and they believed in progress. We no longer
believe in progress because of where it has gotten us.
LS: You talk about how sculpture can guide people into
a new paradigm in your private work, and now you are
extending that idea into the public realm.
CG: How do we get people to think differently? I think
the public is a large part of the problem. In the last
decade, we have privatized more and more things and
spent less and less time and attention on the public
realm. The public has to embrace the fact that we need
to instill imagination into the forms that run things. If
we dont imbue them with some kind of imagination,
then we are bound to the same kind of technocratic
process and numbing forms we have seen since the
engineering profession took over.
LS: Maybe that is the intentionto be a slave to func-
tion and bring the artists in as a form of exaltation.
CG: It is interesting that this is how public art is set
upyou come in and do window dressing. I am grate-
ful that the money is there. The reason we are able to
do it is that the money is protected. But the system,
in protecting the money, has created a situation in
which art is separate. It is half to two percent (targeted
for art) depending on what city you are working in.
LS: You are referring to a real paradigm shiftbringing
artists into the planning level to create positive change
in the environment.
CG: It is already being done, and people are doing it
intelligently. For a project in Arlington, we had to put
together a coalition, and we had to become urban
designers. For a project in Fort Worth, we redid a whole
median, so the street will glow at night. This project
was really smart because it didnt use public art money.
The funding came from the tax finance district. It gets
complicated, but I am finding that these are the types
of things I need to put together in order to work the
way I want to work. No one is really talking about
infrastructure. When your art exists at the scale of
infrastructure, when you work with and become infra-
structure, then you are really operating as part of the
city. For the two gateway stations in Calgary, I installed chandeliers. When
the train pulls in, they turn one color; when the train is waiting, they turn
another color; and when the train leaves, they are regular white.
LS: So its performance?
CG: It is performance. I am interested in sculpture built at the scale of the
city, performing with the city.
LS: Do you have any role models?
CG: I am thinking about sculpture in terms of its history, people in the 80s
who were part of the dialogue of how to make sculpture functional. That
moment was really important to me because it was the point when Mini-
malist dialogue was being taken forward. I feel like I am trying to complete
an unfinished part of the Minimalist projectIm working with industrial
materials, Im working in a series, Im working on the street with nominal
perception, but I am trying to make all of those things part of a working
infrastructure. Because why not? If we are going to build it, why not build
it with that kind of wonder and intention?
Lisa Paul Streitfeld is a writer living in Berlin.
Above: Avenue of Light, 2008. Stainless steel, concrete, and programmable LED lights, 36 x
4 x 8 ft. Work installed in Fort Worth, TX. Below: Luminous Crossings, 2013. Rendering of
project for 7th Avenue Light Rail, Calgary.
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Public Art in
COUNCIL BLUFFS
BY KYLE MACMILLAN
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Abraham Lincoln visited Council Bluffs in
1859 and peered across the broad Missouri
River valley toward Americas fast-changing
frontier. After becoming president, he desig-
nated the bustling trade center as the east-
ern terminus of the first transcontinental
railway, and it would go on to become the
nations fifth largest rail center. Later over-
shadowed by Omaha, its much larger and
better-known urban sibling across the river
to the west, Council Bluffs suffered eco-
nomic stagnation and population declines
in the 1970s and 80sreputed, locally at
least, as much for its strip clubs and late-
night drinking hours as anything else.
In recent years, things have begun to
change dramatically. In 2007, Google
announced that it was building a $600 mil-
lion data center in Council Bluffs, citing
the areas energy infrastructure, abundant
land, and available workforce. The facility
not only provided much-needed jobs, it also
gave the citys ego a big shot in the arm.
But nothing has done more to transform
Council Bluffs image than its sudden emer-
gence as a hotbed of public art.
Since 2007, the Iowa West Foundation
has completed nine outdoor projects
by seven artists at a cost of $11.5 million
an eye-opening amount for a city of a little
more than 62,000 people. Good artand
that includes public artisnt a thing,
stated an Omaha World-Herald editorial in
September 2010. Its an experience. It
might roil the brain, stir up deep feelings,
or just make viewers think. Council Bluffs
artworks do that very well. The city is well
on the way to its goal of public art fame.
About half of the projects, including
Jonathan Borofskys 40-foot-tall Molecule
Man, in addition to works by Jun Kaneko
and William King, are centered on and
around the Mid-America Center, which
includes a convention center and arena. The
most debated work, Albert Paleys Odyssey,
consists of four steel and bronze composi-
tions inspired in part by agricultural imple-
ments. Rising from the corners of an inter-
state highway bridge, they present a star-
tling sight. To mark the unveiling of this
massive work in August 2010, Omahas Jos-
lyn Art Museum hosted an exhibition of
Paleys preparatory drawings, models, and
maquettesan unprecedented cultural col-
laboration between the two neighboring
cities.
I think its exciting, said Joslyn director
Jack Becker about what is happening in
Council Bluffs. Theyve created some inter-
esting things, and theyve created a lot of
dialogue, positive and negative. But at least
theyve created dialogue around public art
and its role in a community. Not only are
many artists, who had probably never heard
of Council Bluffs, now aware of it, but
museum groups, including one from Oak-
land, California, are starting to include the
city on travel itineraries. In addition, trav-
el magazines and other publications are
doing stories on it.
The roots of what is now known as Iowa
West Public Art can be traced to 2003 and
the appointment of J. Todd Graham as presi-
dent and chief executive officer of the Iowa
West Foundation. Graham had previously
worked in cities with strong public art pro-
grams, including Seattle, and he understood
their transformative potential. The private
foundation has approximately $320 million
in assets and distributes $20 million in
grants annually in areas such as educa-
tion, social services, and community devel-
opment. It is funded through investment
Left: Brower Hatcher, Wellspring and Oculus, 2007. Stainless steel rods, water jets, mirrored disks, and
columns, view of works at Bayliss Park. Above: Jun Kaneko, Rhythm, 2009. Ceramic, bronze, and stainless
steel, 21 elements, 26.5 x 462 x 80 feet. Work installed at the Mid-America Center.
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income and the Iowa West Racing Associa-
tion, which holds the licenses on three casi-
nos in Council Bluffs.
By the time of Grahams arrival, the foun-
dation had already embarked on a $20 mil-
lion initiative to beautify and enhance the
parks and streets of Council Bluffs. As part
of that effort, the foundations board
of directors had discussed the idea of public
art, looking to the model of Omaha and
its Pioneer Courage monument (installed
200509), a bronze by Blair Buswell of
Highland, Utah, and Ed Fraughton of South
Jordan, Utah, that depicts four families and
their covered wagons. But Graham wanted
to do something that would set Council
Bluffs apart. He and the foundation began
considering contemporary sculpture, and
to get started, they commissioned a mas-
ter plan in the spring of 2004. The concern
I had, frankly, is that I didnt want a private
foundation board of directors to be picking
art and plopping it down around the city,
said Graham, who left in September 2011
for another foundation position in Virginia.
I thought we should have a process to see
if there is an interest in public art in our
community, number one, and then if there
is, what would you like to see as public art?
More than 50 people were involved in the
year-long planning process, which was led
by a 19-member stakeholder steering com-
mittee. Several area art experts acted as
consultants, including George Neubert, a
former director of the Sheldon Art Museum
at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, who
organized the campus-wide expansion
of its nationally known public art collection.
The result was a 44-page plan that covered
everything from Council Bluffs history to
the legal considerations of future commis-
sions.
Through that process, 51 sites across the
city were identified as potential locations
for sculpture. At the top of the list was
Bayliss Park, a mid-19th-century park in
the heart of downtown. The foundation
began its public art effort there, as part
of a larger renovation of the faded out-
door space. Brower Hatcher designed a
fountain to replace a 1971 version that
had worn out, as well as an adjacent pavil-
ion with a graceful truss-work dome and
a childrens play area. Maybe it was some-
what risky, Graham said, but we decided
to tackle the most important public space
in the city as our first project. Either the
public art program was going to move for-
ward quickly and be supported or we were
going to fall flat on our face. Browers
multi- element installation proved to be
a huge hit. It is frequently used for wed-
dings and other events and has become
a required stop for residents with out-of-
town visitors.
Other works were inevitably more con-
troversial, especially Paleys massive bridge
sculptures. Beyond questions of aesthetics,
there was the cost of nearly $3 million.
People were asking, What were they
thinking to invest millions when there is
suffering and unemployment, Graham
said. The project represented one per-
cent of what we distributed to the com-
munity and we approved [it] before the
recessionIt was just bad timing. But
we dont regret it. It was the right thing
to do.
The most recent addition to the Council
Bluffs public art collection is Ed Carpen-
ters Gateway, completed at the end of
2012. The $1.5 million project reimagines
the newly redesigned Broadway Viaduct,
the citys primary east-west artery, as a
fantasy of light and form. A 76-foot-tall
sculpture, consisting of two gracefully
interlacing, fan-like arrays of steel rods
that span the four-lane roadway, frames
dramatic views, while 111 light elements
run along the sides of the nearly half-mile
bridge.
Pete Tulipana took over as Grahams suc-
cessor in March 2012, moving across the
river from another post in Omaha. He was
already familiar with the foundations pub-
lic art initiative and pledged to continue it.
I accept and believe the notion that pub-
lic art changes the feel and the energy of
a community, he said. Certainly at times,
it creates tremendous conversation, but at
the same time, it allows a sense of place
that nothing else does.
At the time of Grahams departure, two
other art projects were on the foundations
radar, and Tulipana has pressed forward
with botha $500,000 light sculpture by
Don Corson and a $2.5 million work by
Mark di Suvero. Corsons Rays will illumi-
nate the 4.5-acre great lawn of Rivers
Edge Park, which will open officially on
Memorial Day weekend. The $11 million
park is situated on the Council Bluffs side
of a five-year-old pedestrian bridge over
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Albert Paley, Odyssey, 2010. Bronze, Cor-ten, and
stainless steel, 4 elements, 4961 ft. high each.
Work installed at the South 24th Street Bridge.
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the Missouri River that has spurred improve-
ments on both sides of the waterway. The
foundations board of directors also approved
the purchase of di Suveros site-specific,
65-foot-tall, steel-girder work. The artist
has signed off on a location in Rivers Edge
Park at the foot of the pedestrian bridge.
Pending approval by the citys newly estab-
lished public art commission and city coun-
cil, the sculpture is expected to be installed
in late summer or early fall.
Iowa West has no other art projects on
the horizon at the moment, and Tulipana
expects it to slow the pace of acquisitions.
Purchases of works by national and inter-
national figures will likely continue,
but the foundation plans, at least in the
near term, to turn its emphasis to region-
al artists.
We wanted to take a breath, Tulipana
says, and put some focus on regional
and local artists and try to get a couple of
things going, and then we will probably
begin to look at the art master plan and
think about whats next.
Kyle MacMillan is a writer living in
Chicago.
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Above: Jun Kaneko, Rhythm (detail), 2009. Below: William King, Interstate, 2007. Plate-aluminum, 15.5 x
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With an encyclopedic quest for knowledge that seeks no iconic
style, Alice Aycock mines the universe for all that is primeval,
intuitive, technological, and irrational. Spinning millennial
layers into whorls of complex structures, she asks: Whats life
all about? Her recent show, Alice Aycock: Drawings, at The
Grey Gallery, New York University, and the Parrish Art Museum
in Watermill, New York, documented 40 years of public instal-
lations, sculptures, and works on paper. In this interview, she
shares her journey, offering insights into the processes that
guide her monumental works.
Dangerous
Structures
BY JOYCE BECKENSTEIN
Opposite: Super Twister for University of Cincinnati
Medical Science Building Rehab (CARE), 2012. Alum-
inum, approx. 20 x 20 ft. diameter. This page: The
Silent Speakers: Every Day Im Born, Every Night
I Die (1984), 1990. Ink and watercolor on paper,
39.25 x 27.5 in.
Alice
Aycock
A Conversation with
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Joyce Beckenstein: Your masters thesis (1971) about
highways is reminiscent of Leonardos river metaphor
for time: In rivers, the water that you touch is the last
of what has passed and the first of that which comes;
so with present time. It also prefigures your artistic
journey. Why did you choose to study highway systems?
Alice Aycock: You have to go back to what the art
world was involved with in the early 70s: Earth Art,
conceptual art, and the notion of scale outside the
gallery. I was interested in systems, systems theory,
and phenomenologythings that artists were writing
about. On my return home from Greece, I looked out
the plane window and saw this highway system.
It seemed equal to the great earthworks of the past,
a place to start if you wanted to engage a variety of
disciplines.
JB: How informative was that as you moved forward?
AA: Very. Systems with many nodeslike the bodys
arterial systemhave an efficient design. Something
happens in one part of the system, and it affects other
parts and layers. The highway, conceptually and per-
ceptually, is how you encounter the world. Theres no
better example than what happened after Hurricane
Sandy.
JB: How did that notion of systems operate in your
early work?
AA: Maze (1972) is a good example. The sources were
Bruce Naumans Corridors, Earth Art, and Minimalism
that displaced physical space and related to how the
body moved in the space of the work. The next step
was to make semi-architectural sculpture. I made Maze
as a miniature highway, a labyrinth in which you get
lost. I wanted it to be strictly pure and conceptual,
something related only to art world theory. But after
I made it, it had many other associations. People who
came to see it werent knowledgeable about art, but
they knew about amusement parks. Immediately after
putting the piece into the world, the world entered
it and it became an open system. You couldnt confine
it to a theoretical construct. You have to be open to
what a work of art broadcasts, even something you
didnt intend. So I thought, Why not consider these
other references? Youre bored with minimal art anyway.
JB: You were among the first contemporary artists to
see new possibilities for sculpture in architecture. What
led to that?
AA: Architecture was my muse. I had a romance with
it. It held the values of cultures and pushed technology
along. I felt that Russian Constructivism started with
a simple dome, and I was going to follow that trajec-
tory. Forty years later, the art world was different, the
state of the world and knowledge were different. So
you begin somewhere. For me, it would always be a
journey, never about arriving at a style and holding
54 Sculpture 32.4
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Above: Project Entitled The Beginnings of a Complex Excerpt Shaft #4/Five Walls,
1977. Wood, 28 x 8 x 16 ft. Work at Art Park (now destroyed), Lewiston, NY. Below: The
Hundred Small Rooms, 1984. Painted wood, 28 x 12.33 x 12.33 ft.
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on to it for dear life. When you look at the
full range of my work, you can see that pre-
occupations return and reconfigure them-
selves.
JB: Even with the prevailing winds of femi-
nism at your back in the 70s, was it diffi-
cult for you to realize your ambitious archi-
tectural vision?
AA: Frank Lloyd Wrights mother said that
he played with doll houses as a little boy,
and I wondered, Well then, why arent
there more girl architects? They spend
lots of time with doll houses. I realized
that women werent architects because no
one gave them permission. I was lucky.
My father, who was trained as an architect,
had a very large construction company. It
was normal for me to be around cranes. He
would come home, go to his table, and
design a house. I was about four, and Id
sit by him, drawing houses. He built the
house that we lived in. So, I had a very early
imprint, like a duck. It never occurred to
me that I couldnt do what I did. I also had
an incredible grandmothera painter, poet,
writer, and mathematician whose sons
were awed by her brilliance, not by her
ability to cook.
JB: Theres a scary element to your work:
terrifying underground tunnels in the 70s,
sinister blades dominating works from the
80s, and titles such as The Savage Sparkler
(1981). Why all the danger?
AA: The worlds a dangerous place. I want
my work to have the kind of danger of
crossing the street. But also, most of the
art I looked at had a sense of awe. It
showed crucifixions and wars as part of
everyday life. Its not that Im disinterested
in beautiful thingsin fact, I can make very
beautiful things, though I try not to be too
good at it. But if Im going to do that, I
want it to be undercut by something else.
JB: How so?
AA: I designed fantasy cities in the late 70s.
Two of the structures were built. One, The
Hundred Small Rooms (1984), looks very
orderly and pretty on the outside, but there
are little compartments inside, each with
a porthole that takes you up to the next
floor. As you go up, you encase yourself in
a vertical labyrinth. It looks like one thing
on the outside, but it becomes something
else. I also made The Silent Speakers: Every
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Above: Ghost Ballet...(2007), 200812. Ink on paper, set of 4, 20.5 x 15 in. each. Below: Masonry
Enclosure: Project for a Doorway, 1976. Graphite on tracing paper, 34.19 x 50 in.
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Day Im Born, Every Night I Die (1984), in
which the arms move in and out and the
blades spin. Silent speakers inside are
being blackened and scraped. Were you
to put your hand in, you would get a
charge, yet it does have a lyrical quality.
JB: There is a similar disconnect in your
early axonometric drawings. They look so
precise and rational, and then theres the
unsettling reality of what they portend.
AA: Yes. The two drawings that make up
Masonry Enclosure: Project for a Doorway
(1976) are my favorites, and very strong in
that way. I built this rational-looking thing
to get an irrational response. Its brick walls
look like clear geometry, but the door, which
is high up, is unreachable. If you get to the
door, by ladder or rope, youll find steep
steps on the other side. They go deep and
deeper, until you are in the bottom of a
well and cant get out.
56 Sculpture 32.4
Above: The Leonardo Swirl, 1984. Galvanized
sheet metal, 12 x 21 in. diameter. Left: Sand/
Fans, 1971. Sand and fans, approx. 20 sq. ft.
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JB: Your current exhibition contains several drawings for The Beginnings of a Complex
for Documenta (1977). Why was this piece so important to you?
AA: When I visited the Twentieth Century Fox set for Hello Dolly! in downtown Los Angeles,
I saw a parallel between the reconstruction of a false New York City street in the center
of L.A. and the ancient practice of building cities of the dead on the same scale as the
cities of the living. I imagined the piece for Documenta VI as a complex that exists in
the world as a thing in itself and apart from the world as a model for it, a complex that
undercuts its own logic by exposing the premise on which it was built.
JB: Does this collision of the logical and the illogical function as an expression of the
trickster within you, or does it serve the formal oppositions that account for the tension
in your work?
AA: I wanted both outcomes. I am interested in ambiguity, but more in triangulations
than oppositions, in the idea that things shift. When they do, nothing is clear or cer-
tain. Its an approach/withdrawal syndrome thats basic to human nature: come close;
no, back away. Its seductive; no, its terrifying. Im interested in these ends, but its
about the spectrum.
JB: Yet your later works, particularly the drawings for Ghost Ballet for the East Bank
Machineworks (2007, Nashville, Tennessee), suggest something more whimsical.
AA: Ghost Ballet is 25 feet high. Its huge, and the bridge elements in the air are very
precariously balanced, though it may look whimsical in the drawing. The drawing doesnt
reflect the endless series of computer shop drawings showing how the piece was engi-
neered. It is about the movement of the piece; it shows how the elements dance around
each other, not the complexity.
JB: In other words, computer technology enables you to work out the idea as you did in
earlier axonometric drawings and then abstract the actual work as a fine art drawing?
AA: Yes, computer technology provided a
big shift. My earliest drawings allowed me
to see ideas and understand how to build
them. But then it became more sophisti-
cated; you bring in engineers and fabrica-
tors. Theres a whole period when I make
computer renderings that look like the piece;
then, Ill make a rendering/art drawing and
get back to how things look on paper as a
composition. And then, there are drawings
that I just have fun making.
JB: How do these drawings recall specific
forms that repeat in your work? The Leo-
nardo Swirl (1984) comes to mind.
AA: The swirl and stairs are among my recur-
ring forms. The swirl/spiral as a whirlwind
appears in Sand/Fans (1971), then repeats
in Maze and Functional and Fantasy Stair
and Cyclone Fragment (1996, San Fran-
cisco), which is a vortex with stairs wrap-
ping around it. The newer works are about
the phenomena of wind and motion. You
Park Avenue Paper Chase, 2014. Digital inkjet
print on fine art paper, 24 x 33.9 in.
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cant go into them, but they are precarious and tumultuousswirling, chaotic whirlpools
of energy creating and destroying. They repeat in Park Avenue Paper Chase, which will be
installed on Park Avenue, between 52nd and 57th Streets, in 2014.
JB: As your later work shifts toward technology, your references become more about fan-
tasy, mythology, and magic. Why?
AA: So much science came out of alchemy and magical thinking. The whole notion of
magnetism led people to think that, by harnessing the lodestone or magnet, they could
get people to do what they wanted. The Frankenstein myth is wrapped in the idea that
electricity can zap people back to life. We dont know how the Internet works. We just
want it to. Let the power go off, and you pray for it to go back on. Thats where magic
comes in. Works like How to Manufacture Ghosts are metaphors. Technology has a pur-
pose. My work does not. It doesnt make Campbells soup cans or automobiles.
JB: Then does the magic/science connection in your work allude to the function of the
art piece as a more intuitive, imaginative construct?
AA: Yes, much like Duchamp and Ernst dealt with all kinds of technology. Duchamp re-
purposed toolsthe urinal, the bottle rackas poetry. You can find pieces of Duchamp
and Ernst in my work. I studied them carefully. These guys were in the worldflight,
cinema, cars, psychology, and what Einstein was doing. They were sucking it all up,
screwing with it, playing with it, masticating it. I thought, Look at those guys. They
really have something there, figuring out that men who could fly had bombed them-
selves back to the Stone Age, wiped out huge populations. How do you deal with that?
Do you go back to the same old ideas that didnt work in the first place? They invented
Surrealism and Dada to express the meaninglessness of the world.
JB: How do you think all that resonates with artists using todays technologies?
AA: I dont think we really comprehend what we are in. Were in the heart of narcissism,
people showing themselves off. Meanwhile the world is so extraordinary, and were not
looking at it, not stepping back. Artists want to make things that make people happy.
JB: How does that affect the role of public
art today? How do you think its changed
since Brooke Rapaport interviewed you for
Sculpture in 2003?
AA: I think public art came out of Earth Art
and the notion that you could go out into
the world and work on a grand scale. I think
it failed in most cases. What is happening
now is that bad public art is as bad as bad
gallery art. Both pander to mediocrity. In
other words, dont offendor do offend
do what they want you to do. Use public
dollars to the lowest common denomina-
tor. It doesnt always happen, but it has
to be fought against.
In a video made when I returned from
Documenta, I said, I think approval is a
tricky thing, and you have to be wary. Once
you allow the notion of How can I please
them? youre in the realm of mediocrity.
Im not interested in building to a
political system. I want to build as an
architect builds, by balancing lots of
things to make people think about form
58 Sculpture 32.4
Park Avenue Paper Chase: Maelstrom (render-
ing), 2014. Painted aluminum, 12 x 20 x 70 ft.
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and scalethings like thatin a differ-
ent way.
JB: Retrospectives look forward through a
rear-view mirror. How do your late drawings
and installations, such as Devil Whirl-
winds on the Rivers Run (2011) and The
Game of Flyers Part Two (2012), point
to the next incarnation of Alice Aycock?
And, how does this showcase of achieve-
ment alter your sense of yourself as an
artist?
AA: Im evaluating myself. I see all of the
things that I intended to do but didnt.
There is something about transience and
the ephemeral that Im really interested
in getting at, pieces that I thought of in
the 90s and still want to do if I can get
them really fearsome, with tumultuous
energy. I got back to drawing in a big way
with Rock, Paper, Scissors (2010). Draw-
ings are worlds in themselves, a way
to express many levels of meaning. They
have more content than sculpture and
can be more complex and fictional. There
are a whole bunch of new drawings that I
cant wait to do.
Joyce Beckenstein is a writer living in New
York.
Above: Park Avenue Paper Chase: Cyclone Twist (rendering), 2014. Painted aluminum, 24 x 14 x 14 ft.
Below: The Game of Flyers Part Two, 2012. Inkjet print and watercolor on paper, 36 x 60 in.
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Two special 5-week ne art intensives
Credit and non-credit
July 1 August 2, 2013
Bronze
Casting
The Iron
Vessel
Ofce of the Dean of Special Programs
www.skidmore.edu/summer
518.580.5458
Creative Thought Matters
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,advertise in
contact: Brenden OHanlon
email: advertising@sculpture.org
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MsAt M, 01AM
Jared Steffensen
Central Utah Art Center
Jared Steffensens solo exhibition,
Moms always afraid I am going
to hurt myselfI usually do, was
at once blithe and sophisticated,
sparking an unexpected (and even
overlapping) dialogue between
skateboarding and formalism. Using
a once underground, now main-
stream culture as his starting point,
Steffensen consolidated tropes com-
mon to both skateboarding and art-
makingriffing on existing environ-
mental elements and recognizing
the potential of objects.
Referencing Minimalism, Abstract
Expressionism, action art, geomet-
ric abstraction, and early video art,
Steffensen marries two seemingly
disparate realms. The physical
endeavor of skateboarding and the
evidence it leaves behind are two of
his specific springboards. His works
seem to fall into one of two inverse
forms: abstracted constructions
made for skating and abstractions
of marks made by the action of
skating. The first re-scales recogniz-
able forms such as ramps and rails
and recontextualizes them as sculp-
tures; the second draws on the envi-
ronment and architecture as form,
reviews
Above: Jared Steffensen, installation
view of Moms always afraid Ill
hurt myselfI usually do, 2012.
Right: Jared Steffensen, RRRRTTT!!!,
2012. Rock, 72 x 20 x 12 in.
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72 Sculpture 32.4
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implying movement and action (as
in /3|, which placed brightly col-
ored marks along ledges and hand-
rails in the building). These formal
adaptations reflect some common
ground. Seeking, assessing, and
appropriating the body, landscape,
objects made for other purposes,
and public space are practices fol-
lowed by skateboarders and artists
alike. And when this fails, they con-
struct their own objects to bend to
their will.
Steffensens previous work has
dealt with regionalism, landscape,
and an architectural approach to
representative form-making. This
showing offered a refined extension.
Almost every work has a double
meaning that resonates in the coded
spheres of the art world and the
skating world. ||||''' aligns with
minimal mark-making while recall-
ing the abrupt skid and stop of a
skateboard wheel when it runs over
a pebblefrom which the name is
derived. It is also a nod to Michael
Heizers ||ceo |c (1971). This
inert rock with a white chalk-like
mark behind it effectively unites two
esoteric references in one object.
Hc|||n |c| |c:,, the only video in
the exhibition, draws a similar par-
allel. Titled after an iconic skate-
boarder (Stacy Peralta), it features
a repeating clip of Natas Kaupus (a
pioneer of street skating), which
makes it an eternal 360-degree
spin. This, in turn, visually references
Dara Birnbaums 197879 video
e:|nc|c,|cn|c|mc||cn Hcn
oe| Hcmcn, in which Wonder
Woman endlessly transforms in a
fiery rotation. Video is a mainstay of
both practices, serving as a record
of a performance or an artistic form
on its own.
Successful sculpturally and con-
ceptually, the works in Moms
always afraid I am going to hurt
myselfI usually do offer a strange
mash-up of skateboarding and con-
temporary art that strikes a shrewd
balance between high- and low-
brow. Steffensen, it seems, remains
legit in both practices.
tc|c |ec|n
los AWsttts
Charles Ray
Matthew Marks Gallery
Figurative sculpture has been a
mainstay of Charles Rays work
since his early days as an artist,
when he pinned his elevated body
against the wall with a board (||cn|
||e:e | and ||, 1973) and arranged
himself naked on metal shelves,
merging the hard forms and surfaces
of Minimalism with their antithesis,
flesh. Since then, the figurative line
of his work has shifted to life-like
fiberglass sculptures such as 0|
t|c||e,, t|c||e,, t|c||e, (1992), the
group orgy scene starring eight
copies of himself, and to painted
metal works like the white steel 3c,
H||| ||c (2009), permanently
installed on Venices Grand Canal.
Rays first solo show in L.A. since
his 2007 exhibition of ||nc||, a recon-
structed fallen tree, contains two
figures: 'con |cn and |ee|n
Hcmcn (both 2012) in solid stainless
steel, polished to a soft sheen. From
real flesh to flesh-like fiberglass to
flat-painted metal to silvery stain-
less steel: maybe Rays figures are
slowly backing away from anthropo-
morphism.
Though the two sculptures are
separate pieces, Ray situated them
carefully for this show, placing them
a stones throw apart in an other-
wise empty gallery, at the exact dis-
tance from each other at which
their spheres of energy barely over-
lap; whether or not they share a
plane is a compelling ambiguity. As
with much of Rays work, their qual-
Left: Jared Steffensen, Corner Pocket, 2012. Wood, 6 x 6 x 4 ft. Below:
Charles Ray, Young Man, 2012. Solid stainless steel, 71 x 21 x 13.5 in.
sculpture
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ities extend into unexpected dimen-
sions. Both works are enormously
heavy, with the larger of the two,
|ee|n Hcmcn, weighing in at
6,000 pounds. Along with the weight,
the mesmerizing, gelatinous way
that light slides over stainless steel,
with no hard glare or glints, must
have attracted Ray to the medium,
which has the reflective properties
of satin. Its weird to see skin, hair,
and clothing rendered in this mater-
ial. More than Rays flat-painted alu-
minum figures, definitely more than
the fiberglass mannequins, 'con
|cn and |ee|n Hcmcn wobble
between pure objects and human
stand-ins.
Yet something peculiarly inert
about these sculptures inhibits their
power, even if Ray meant to exploit
this quality through their poses
the woman dozing on a bench, the
young man standing with a dumb-
founded expression as if gravity has
slowed him to stillness. The move-
ment, the ripple in reality that
weve come to expect, perhaps too
automatically, when encountering
Rays work feels absent, maybe
because the luxe silver color causes
the sculptures to read as collectors
objects. Of course they are, in part,
and we should question whether its
Rays job to shield viewers from this
fact. Still, its a characteristic that
makes us encounter the sculptures
squarely on an everyday, material
plane rather than, as in Rays
strongest work, navigating a jog in
perception in order to meet them.
Art-object status encases 'con |cn
and |ee|n Hcmcn somewhat like
a shell, canceling out their potential
to feel uncanny. Meanwhile, light
plays over their exteriors in shifting
abstract shapes, creating another
skin, another obscuring, if gorgeous
layer. There is conceptual and physi-
cal beauty in these sculptures, but
their surfaces have a curious way of
muting their psychic impact.
|c||e||ne c|c||o
SAW IsAWct sco
Ann Weber
Dolby Chadwick Gallery
Ann Webers large organic sculptures
exist in the borderland between
abstraction and figuration. Many of
her swelling bodies evoke the female
form, while others are products of
her ingenious imagination. We are
also reminded of chess pieces,
doughnuts, balloons, and bobbins.
Some appear like bowling pins, and
one looks a little like a bugle horn.
Her materials are as simple as can
be: salvaged cardboard, which is cut
into strips, held together by staples,
and then shellacked for protection.
The polyurethane coating lends
a rich gloss to the finished works.
Depending on the cardboard, the
work is likely to be off-white, beige,
or brown. Some of the pieces are
enlivened by color, depending on the
labels or advertisements. Webers
work, using stuff that is readily avail-
able, recalls Arte Povera sculptures
by Mario Merz, Jannis Kounellis, and
Michelangelo Pistoletto, who worked
with simple, everyday materials. Arte
Povera, like other 60s initiatives
(including conceptual art, Land Art,
Funk, performance, and installation)
was programmed for an art that
could not be traded on the market.
Webers oversize pieces, too, cannot
be easily bought and sold. She has,
however, been commissioned to cre-
ate permanent installations in Sacra-
mento and Lafayette, California,
Phoenix, and Denver. The outdoor
pieces were transferred to bronze
and fiberglass.
Weber, who was born in Michi-
gan, studied at Purdue University
and then worked as a potter in New
York, turning out dishes of all kinds
for up-market stores in Manhattan.
After almost 15 years, she got tired
of making utilitarian objects and,
after seeing an exhibition of Viola
Freys monumental ceramic sculp-
ture at the Whitney Museum, she
decided to study with Frey at the
California College of Arts and Crafts
(now the California College of Art).
Frey became a mentor and joined
Louise Nevelson, Louise Bourgeois,
and Ruth Asawa as an important
inspiration. While working in Freys
large Oakland studio, Weber decid-
ed to make her own sculpture
out of the cardboard that was lying
around.
Above: Charles Ray, Sleeping Woman,
2012. Solid stainless steel, 35.5 x 44.5
x 50 in. Right: Ann Weber, installation
view with (left to right) For the Love
of Frank Lloyd Wright, 2012, found
cardboard, staples, PVC pipe, and
polyurethane, 3 pieces; You My But-
terfly, 2012, found cardboard, sta-
ples, and polyurethane, 2 pieces; and
Miracles and Wonder, 2012, found
cardboard, staples, and polyurethane,
2 pieces.
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74 Sculpture 32.4
Webers recent sculptures, which
tend to be tall and large, are sup-
ported by metal rods that act as
armatures to balance the cardboard
totems. Her pieces are non-frontal,
offering different aspects as viewers
move around them or turn them on
their bases. They also come in pairs,
such as 'co |, 3o||e|||, (2012),
which consists of two bubbly objects
(one large, one small) facing each
other. Some of her sculptures swing
from the ceiling. One piece is
formed by a series of identical parts
and recalls Brancusis |no|e
tc|omn. Brancusi worked with ele-
mental forms, and Weber asserts
that she works with very simple
formscircles, spheres, and cylin-
ders...those universal shapes which
are also found in nature.
|e|e| e|
WAsMt Ws1oW, 0t
Antico: The Golden Age of
Renaissance Bronzes
National Gallery of Art
An exquisite touring exhibition of
small Renaissance bronzes by the
sculptor known as Antico shows that
strategies of appropriation and serial-
ization, often considered to have orig-
inated in the 20th century, have an
illustrious and much longer history.
This tiny jewel box of treasures37
statuettes, busts, reliefs, and medals
brought together for the first time
remedies the historic invisibility of an
artist who transformed the art and
technology of bronze sculpture half
a millennium ago, but didnt rate
a mention in Vasaris ||.e His nick-
name means old, but the concerns
of the Mantuan court artist Pier
Jacopo Alari Bonacolsi (c. 14551528)
seem contemporary. These highly
refined, gilded and silvered bronzes
display a stunning mix of fine craft,
sumptuous finishes, and technologi-
cal innovation and luxury, making
them as desirable as the sleekest
new iProduct.
The centerpiece of the show was
an elegant ec|eo |,m|, probably
made in 1503. Barely eight inches
tall, it shimmers with a rich inter-
play of gilding, silvering, and
Anticos signature black patination.
It was modeled after an antique
marble (c. 1st2nd century CE) origi-
nally thought to represent Venus.
Like other works in the exhibition, it
was made for personal enjoyment
at close range in princely |oo|c||,
private rooms ostensibly for study
that served as showcases and trea-
suries. Anticos patron Isabella
dEste (14601530), the intellectual
Marchesa of Mantuaone of the
few women to create a famously
sophisticated |oo|c|c of her own
commissioned the nymph for a cor-
nice above a door. She was not dis-
appointed. I have not found any-
thing that is equal, she wrote.
Anticos genius in bronze casting
becomes evident when comparing
various casts of a single model and
copies to an original. Viewers can
study the Louvres fine |e|:o|e (c.
2nd3rd century CE) next to two
casts of a model that Antico created
around 1496: a version possibly
made that same year (from the Frick
Collection) and a smaller copy cast
after 1519 (on loan from Viennas
Kunstkammer). Hercules appears
again in four dynamic reliefs
depicting his labors (from the Bar-
gello). The catalogue features
detailed results from technical stud-
ies of the casting and finishing
techniques pioneered by Antico, as
well as alloy analyses and diagrams
of his workshop methods and innov-
ative processes for indirect lost wax
casting.
Working on the classical side of
Renaissance humanism, looking not
to nature but to older art, with a
clear preference for pagan antiquity
over Christian themes, Antico created
what co-curator Claudia Kryza-Gersch
calls an art of utter contentment.
He was the first to make small
bronzes look effortless and natural,
even if he did not achieve the same
breathtaking sense of life seen in
the engravings by his contemporary
Mantegna, which were installed to
provide context but nearly stole the
show.
The opulence on view at the
National Gallery dispelled any doubt
that the Italians were the richest
people in 15th- and 16th-century
Europe, as David Gilmour notes in
his new book |e |o|o|| c| ||c|,
Those who cant pursue a statuette
for their own studiolo may find the
catalogue irresistible, with its stun-
ning cover image of the nymphs
velvety black back and her gleam-
ing fire-gilded hair.
tc|||,n |e||e|
tMt cAso
Richard Hunt
McCormick Gallery
Richard Hunts recent exhibition of
rarely seen early sculptures and
works on paper was a remarkable
mini-retrospective of pieces never
exhibited outside his studio in Ben-
ton Harbor (Michigan) since they
were created in the mid-1950s. They
demonstrate how Hunt was able to
forge a personal sculptural identity
at a time when the subjective and
expressive content of the Modernist
imagination was still thriving, dri-
ven by Surrealist automatism and
subconscious expression. Abstract
Expressionism, with its themes of
mythopoetic tragedy and existential
anxiety, as well as the work of
Spanish sculptor Julio Gonzlez, were
among Hunts early influences.
The earliest pieces, from 1955,
depict skeletal humanoids that owe a
debt to Giacomettis post-apocalyptic
figures. Hunt followed these with a
Antico, Seated Nymph, c. 1503.
Bronze with gilding and silvering,
19.5 cm. high.
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remarkable series of welded amal-
gamations that included scrap yard
cast-offs such as chair legs, tubes,
bicycle parts, a wheel, a doorknob,
and segments of tire rims. Poetically
re-humanized by their rusty surfaces,
these works surprise with their inven-
tive and animated suspension in
space. tcn||o:||cn 0, |, and | (all
1956) and /e:|c| (1957), some of the
most inventive pieces, transform cur-
vaceous wooden forms resembling
abstract torsos through the addition
of spindly metal legs and iron wire
filaments that rise upward like plant
tendrils or insect antennae. These
works already bear Hunts unique
sensibility, with graceful metal lines
interweaving through the forms and
lending a sense of sophisticated
spontaneity.
|ee| 3|ccm (1962) demonstrates
a remarkable spatial acrobatics of
organic and geometric counterpoint
in totemic form. |onn|n |,|||o
(1965) is painstakingly constructed
from fused and polished stainless
steel bumpers, suggesting a quasi-
human/insect life form ready to
take flight. The works on paper in
ink, pencil, gouache, and casein are
clearly inspired by Abstract Expres-
sionist techniques and revel in the
creation of strange plant and skele-
tal morphologies.
Several serpentine and scythe-
shaped metal forms of African inspi-
ration testified to the spiritual and
animistic energy with which Hunt
sought to imbue his works. Over
time, his tragic human forms became
abstractly reconfigured into spirit,
seeking transcendence through
expressive release. ||nc| |cno
men| (1963), loosely based on the
Victory of Samothrace, presents this
ultimate fusion of human spirit
struggling to rise out of intractable
steel matter. Here, the humanoid
form extends from its heavy pedestal
into a crown of gesticulating
limbs, petals, and wings. Many young
artists today express a desire to
return to an authenticity that con-
ceptual art and postmodern theory,
even by Douglas Crimps assess-
ment, has failed to address. These
newly revealed slices of history
demonstrate how Hunt was able to
forge an authentic language of his
own from the Abstract Expres-
sionist and Surrealist basis of the
Modernist tradition.
||cne |coc
As1 BAM1oW, Ntw osK
Costantino Nivola
The Drawing Room
Trained as a mason in Sardinia,
where he was born and raised,
Costantino Nivola (191188)
embraced carving and casting
throughout his career. Though this
background equipped him with a
profound knowledge of traditional
materials and techniques, he never
shied away from exploring a wide
range of resources. Concrete and
terra cotta were as much a part of
his regular vocabulary as marble,
fossil-embedded travertine, and
bronze. His experimentation with
materials, combined with a devo-
tion to abstracted form, made
Nivola a true Modernist. In 1939, he
and his wife, Ruth Guggenheim,
immigrated to New York City, and
by 1948, they had settled in The
Springs on Long Island, where they
befriended neighboring artists,
including Jackson Pollock, Willem de
Kooning, and Mark Rothko, among
others. In addition to an interest
in Cubism, this connection to the
Abstract Expressionists encouraged
Nivolas search for an individual
symbolism rooted in abstraction,
though he would never abandon
figurative references for good. His
late work, which was the main
subject of this exquisite exhibition,
revealed as much.
Focusing primarily on sculpture
from the last decade of Nivolas life,
the show presented several varia-
tions on one of his signature forms,
often referred to as the Sardinian
widow Rendered in bronze, traver-
tine, and white, black, and salmon
Carrara marble carved in Pietra-
santa, these works are highly stylized
abstractions evocative of a female
figure.
Mysterious, with their arms spread
wide as if to celebrate an open
embrace, these sculptures are char-
acterized by an almost otherworldly
aura. Each figure appears draped in
a large cloak, which functions as a
veil of sorts and makes for wing-like
curves connecting the extended
arms and the trunk of the body. In
its abstraction, the figure becomes
Above: Richard Hunt, Construction O,
1956. Cottonwood and steel, 55 x
32 x 23 in. Right: Costantino Nivola,
Architectures, 1981. Bronze, instal-
lation view.
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76 Sculpture 32.4
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metaphorical. It is an invitation,
and a testament to everything
soothing. It also is rich in theatri-
cality. Slim, with minimal curves
outlining head, torso, breasts, and
stomach, these figures are of
almost archaic simplicity, which ren-
ders their presence iconic and
immediate. Each one pays homage
to feminine strength and the nur-
turing spirit while alluding to char-
acteristics associated with god-
desses, earth mothers, and the Virgin
Mary.
At The Drawing Room, several
mid-size sculptures were presented
on separate pedestals in a half
circle. The marble and travertine
surfaces seemed to hold and reflect
light, providing the sculptures with
an unusual glow. Meanwhile, in
a separate space, a selection of dim-
inutive Architectures was dis-
played. All were cast in 1981 from
highly textured wax sculptures.
Exploring geometric planes, these
works formed a clear contrast to the
more figurative sculptures, allowing
some insight into Nivolas lifelong
interest in architecturally structured
space.
Some of the earliest works in the
show were made of concrete, which
Nivola liked to carve wet. Painted to
accentuate their dimensionality or
to introduce a line drawing within
the composition, these sculptures
are defined by their unique texture,
which recalls that of Sardinian vil-
lage walls, a distinct feature in the
landscape that informed Nivolas
work over the course of his entire
career. It is the particular strength
of his oeuvre that it always appears
personal and intimate, allowing
some insight into his roots, heritage,
and emotional life.
|e|cn|e 3o|mcnn
Ntw osK
Dave Cole
DODGEgallery
On first seeing Dave Coles recent
exhibition, I was struck by the ani-
matronic and craft features in its
main attraction, |e |o|: 3c\, a
13-ton asphalt compactor recon-
structed into a working music box
that plays The Star-Spangled
Banner. The bumper is crafted from
cherry wood, and, on closer inspec-
tion, some of the machines other
parts have been meticulously repro-
duced to permit its dismantling
and functioning as an art object.
Another labor-intensive work con-
sisted of a hand-sewn American
flag, made of lead yet detailed with
the wrinkles and stitches of cloth.
Coles flags vary in size from monu-
mental to small, but they all use
the government-issue scale template.
Nearby, a Singer sewing machine
seemed to be searching the Inter-
net for the key to its operating sys-
tem, its needle printing a coded
message on a spool of ticker tape.
Coles work deploys highly charged
and transformedsymbols.
On second viewing, what stood
out was Coles deep commitment to
metaphors that, for him, embody
Langston Hughess refrain for under-
served populations: I, too, sing
America. Cole seems to contrast
industrial might, Fortune 500 com-
panies, and American icons with
various vulnerable symbols, from
babies to veterans. He sculpts wood-
en baby rattles into three genera-
tions of hand grenades and turns a
beat-up, broken rattan wheelchair
into a resting place for a mound of
20,000 buffalo nickels that add
up to his own weight. Of course, the
depicted Indians and buffalos (like
nickels themselves) have drastically
declined due to American policies.
Cole is also equating his body
weight/human life with money that
circulated between World War I and
World War IItwo of the bloodiest
wars of all time. The wheelchair
suggests that the body has been
ravaged. |e |o|: 3c\ has two
aural/poetry metaphors: the 1814
Francis Scott Key lyrics about the
flag raised beside the rockets red
glare and a Siegfried Sassoon poem
suggesting that each generation
favors || war. Coles work seems to
ask us to rethink patriotism in rela-
tion to human life.
This was also a show for people
who like to tinker withand
drivebig machines. When invited
to climb into the cab of the com-
pactor, I experienced an adrenalin
surge from being so high up. This
reminded me that giant machines
built to destroy need willing, trained
operators. Patriotism, war, and
heavy machinery are ongoing obses-
sions for Cole. Before his lead flag
series, he made flags from recov-
ered bullets and bullet fragments
(2009) and from toy soldiers painted
red, white, and blue (2006). In 2005,
he knitted a 30-by-20-foot acrylic
felt flag at MASS MoCA, using
aluminum utility pole needles
attached to John Deere-machine
arms. |e |o|: 3c\, which was
commissioned by the Cleveland
Institute of Art, received the 2009
deCordova Sculpture Park and
Museum Rappaport Prize.
|cn 6c|oen tc||c
Left: Dave Cole, Song-Books of The War, 2012. Mixed media, wheelchair,
and 20,000 buffalo nickels, 49.75 x 26 x 43 in. Above: Dave Cole, The Music
Box, 2012. Caterpillar CS-553 Vibratory Roller-Compactor, cherry wood,
spring steel, and U.S. national anthem, 11 x 19 x 8 ft.
sculpture
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Crystal Schenk
Miller Fine Art Gallery
Crystal Schenks installation /||||c:|
c| |emc|, started off as a vague
image in her mind connected to the
loss and longing that she experi-
enced after her mothers suicide. She
captured these qualities by creating
a circular field of magnets, one set
hung from the ceiling and the other
tethered to the floor using nearly
invisible wire. The result was an
almost magically hovering, two-level
cloud of objects, with a plane of
empty space separating them.
The installation had an overpower-
ing and almost disorienting effect
on people entering the roomthey
immediately slowed down, stopped
talking, and brought themselves into
line with the quieter, more medita-
tive energy of the room. There was
an air of mystery as people stared in
fascination, wondering how the pods
managed to hover. Often they forgot
about the magnets in the piece (even
after reading the artist statement)
and then had an aha moment as
they figured it out. Each magnet
is completely enclosed in a pod-like
shape made from silk flower petals,
which concealed the mechanism of
the attraction between the two sets
of objectsat least temporarily. The
plane of empty space between the
pods coming down from the ceiling
and the pods coming up from the
floor conjured the question of con-
nection, or the desire for an impossi-
ble connection, which mimics the
yearning for someone who has died.
The pods transitioned in a pulse
of color: from a deep reddish-orange
in the center to a golden yellow,
and then to a creamy white at the
edges of the circle. Instead of one
point of focus, the variation created
a more diffused, phenomenological
experience. The very minimal
imagery recalled neurons, hazy mem-
ories that wont take shape, and
the yearning for lost connections.
The desire and draw between the
two sets of magnets created a
charged spacethe synaptic gap
where messages and memories
are transmitted or misplaced.
/||||c:| c| |emc|, had an almost
imperceptible sense of movement,
as the pods gently swayed and
turned in the air currents. The eye
or pointed ellipse arrangement left
about five feet of space where it
came closest to the wall, so viewers
had to sometimes navigate a nar-
row space. Many people expressed
an intense desire to walk into the
piece and were frustrated by their
inability to do so; their feelings
were much like the magnetic ten-
sion that created the empty plane.
The installation changed significantly
as you viewed it from different
vantage points. At eye level, you saw
an empty plane of space between
the pods; if you crouched down,
you saw them suspended above you
in a burst of color; and from above,
you seemed to be peering down
into a reflecting pool.
|||c|e|| |cemcn
SMtswoob AsK,
Atsts1A, tAWAbA
Lyndal Osborne and
Sherri Chaba
Strathcona County Art Gallery
@ 501
Last year, environmental protests
against the Keystone XL pipeline
shook the White House and sent rip-
ples through the presidential election
campaign. This ongoing debate
put Albertaa once quiet Canadian
provinceinto the media limelight.
Two Alberta artists, Lyndal Osborne
and Sherri Chaba, recently mounted
an exhibition that addressed a range
of environmental issues, including
genetic diversity and loss of farm-
land, while focusing on the tar sands
controversy and oil industry discards:
tailings ponds.
Both artists came to their environ-
mental subject matter through per-
sonal experience. Osborne grew
up in Australia, where she walked
on the beach every day collecting
seeds and pebbles. She was, in her
words, a nature girl. After arriving
in Canada and buying some
acreage, she grew alarmed about
the numerical labels marking agri-
cultural fields visible from her living
room window. The numbers indicated
genetically modified canola that, as
her research showed, didnt respond
to herbicides. More recently, sterile
swaths of cookie-cutter houses,
marching like invading armies, have
surrounded her home. Chaba was
spurred to action when an oil
pipeline crossed her cherished family
farm. She looked on as several acres
of forest were cut down, leaving a
scarred landscape. The compensa-
tion that she, and other farmers,
received didnt come close to cover-
ing the costs of reforestation.
As important as environmental
issues are to these artists, their work
remains nuanced. It is not what
some commentators call hysterical
environmentalism. When entering
the show, the first impression was
of seductive beauty, not didacticism.
Dim lights illuminated richly tex-
tured, glistening objects. But this
Aladdins cave of treasure did
not contain jewelsthe gorgeously
seductive objects consisted of noth-
ing more precious than cast-offs
such as wire, plastic straws, chicken
bones, machinery parts, rubber
shards, seeds, and broken glass.
It was only up close that the
message emerged. |.0||, a collab-
orative work, featured containers
shaped like aerial outlines of tail-
ings ponds (Chaba and Osborne
tried to view one of these waste sites
but were not given access.) Each
container held objects such as
water-blue glass and ceramic dis-
cards resembling miniature cities.
These metaphoric tailings ponds
glided along a wire mesh assembly
belt into an uncertain future.
The artists individually created
installations set up a dichotomy
almost a clashof visions. Chaba
depicts dire environmental scenar-
ios. In :ene |neen, for instance,
a middle-class house made entirely
of magnifying glass looks out on
stark realities: a dead fish hanging
trapped between rusty wires, a
Crystal Schenk, Artifacts of Mem-
ory, 2012. 1100 magnets, silk
flower petals, and wire, 18 x 36 ft.
sculpture
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78 Sculpture 32.4
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goose standing immobilized in a
slick of oil. Osbornes exquisitely
intricate assemblages seamlessly
combine materials that are usually
at odds. In 0|cn|m, plastic
straws adjoin rhubarb seeds to form
mesmerizing and previously undis-
covered species. Osbornes harmo-
nious symphony of textures evokes
a vision of a future in which indus-
try and nature coexist.
Such nuanced, even conflicted
environmental perspectives exempli-
fy the attitudes of many. In Alberta,
technology and oil not only offer
livelihoods to most families (includ-
ing Chabas), they are indispensable
to survival. The normal winter tem-
perature here is minus 22 degrees
Fahrenheitflesh freezes in minutes.
Under these conditions, it is tempt-
ing to overlook harsh environmental
forecasts or to dismiss reports that
more than 1,600 ducks have drowned
in Alberta tailings ponds. Art exhibi-
tions like Witness prevent us from
turning away. Beauty is the sugar
that makes the medicine palatable.
/n|e|c |c|e|c
Wts1 8st11oW, 0. k.
Joan Mir
Yorkshire Sculpture Park
Although Joan Mir was an early
pioneer of construction, most of his
three-dimensional work was con-
centrated within the latter part of
his life. This exhibition, a collabora-
tion between Yorkshire Sculpture
Park, the artists family, and founda-
tions, offered a journey through
Mirs fervent imagination, taking
viewers from smooth dark bronzes
to audacious, brilliantly colored
assemblages of found objects, to a
throng of theatrical personages set
high on plinths. Outside, humanoid
forms could be viewed on the
lawns, terraces, and peaks, creating
a magical, otherworldly experience.
Mir held a deep sense of national
identity with regard to Catalan
affairs, but even when addressing
difficult political issues, his work
retained an energetic dynamism,
celebrating the humble and earth-
bound. He cast a wide range of
worthless stuff in bronze, believing
that people would better understand
his work if they could identify with
the objects usedcooking pots,
food, crushed cans, cutlery, egg car-
tons, shells, mannequin parts, and
misplaced shoes, for instance.
For Mir, each grain of dust con-
tains the soul of something mar-
velous. He viewed his creations as
creatures that one might see in a
dreama host of shapes, sizes, and
textures sprouting the most unlikely
appendages. He saw comedy in the
human form and its variable protru-
sions, often raw and ungainly (as in
Hcmcn u||| c |cn |ce) or buoyant
and willowy (as in |e tc|e c| ||e
3||o). His smaller personages, in par-
ticular, are wildly expressive. Their
globular features present human
physiognomy at its most extreme, as
in ||o |co||e|, a squat figure with
arms outstretched, head thrown back,
and eyes popping in a massive yawn.
Mir recognized the absurdity of
human intention, but his figures
exude such humor and warmth that
one can only empathize with their
inherent ridiculousness. Hcmcn,
with her cumbersome ribcage made
of a cast turtle shell, stands upright
on one enormous foot. 6||| |:c|n
strikes a provocative pose, despite
the red hydrant tap protruding from
her yellow, spherical head. These
works draw life from their improba-
ble conjunctions of forms, and in this
sense, Mir never lost sight of the
essence of childhood. As an anarchist
of the most agreeable kind, he had
the ability to view the world with an
untainted eye and to represent its
contradictions with forthright hon-
esty and conviction.
Mir was a master of metamorpho-
sis, and this exhibition highlighted
the transformative aspect of his
work. The character of each sculpture
continually fluctuated depending on
viewing angle, especially out in the
grounds, where space was given
to view the works from every conceiv-
able vista. For instance, the bronze
|e|cnnce, which appeared heavy
and disproportionate when viewed
front on, appeared feather-light from
the side, as though it would be swept
away by the next gust of wind.
|e|cnnce was inspired by two
incongruous elementsan almond
and a pebble. These small forms
became the nucleus for the sculp-
ture, and viewing this source mater-
ial in the exhibition was exception-
ally moving. A kind of shape-shifter,
|e|cnnce beckoned from its posi-
tion outside, eyes doleful and arms
Left, top and bottom: Lyndal Osborne
and Sherri Chaba, 2 views of Wit-
ness, 2012. Below: Joan Mir, Per-
sonnage, 1970. Bronze, 200 x 120 x
100 cm.
sculpture
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foreshortened and outstretched like
a fledgling. As a squirrel and a crow
circled amicably around the work,
foraging in the lush lawn, Mirs aim
seemed encapsulated and complete.
Acute observation of flora and fauna
had always informed his work,
and he wanted his sculptures to be
viewed in the open air, to become
confused with the elements of
naturean aim that Yorkshire
Sculpture Park has honored.
|nc tc|e
6oWsj u, Sou1M kostA
Nature, Man, and Sound
5th Geumgang Nature Art
Biennale
The 5th Geumgang Nature Art Bien-
nale, which took Nature, Man, and
Sound as its theme, was organized
by Yatoo, a group that has been in
existence since the early 1980s. The
mix of work was international, with
strong Korean representation, rang-
ing from conceptual to Land Art-ish,
purely sculptural, and sound sculp-
turesall seeking integration within
their environment. Some works, like
those by Kees Ouwens, Herb Parker,
and Alois Leopold Lindenbauer,
emphasized sustainability, while oth-
ers, like Roger Rigorths, emphasized
poetry. All of the works were pro-
duced on site, along the Geumgang
River in Gongju.
Parkers 6eomcn ||c|coe con-
sisted of two structures based on
early South Korean habitations.
Made of thatched bamboo, the two
connected chambers fit into each
other, as though they were one struc-
ture with a single opening. People
could sit in either side and communi-
cate through an hourglass-like open-
ing. German sculptor Thomas May,
founder of the Grass Blade Institute,
created a kind of |c||o :cn:|oo or
enclosed garden. People could insert
their heads into the hanging struc-
ture of ||.e |e|cn 6c|oen to view the
grass growing inside. Rigorths
dragonfly-like wings, their rhythmic
motion generated by the wind,
floated by on the river. Lindenbauers
living boat gradually took shape
as he planted willow trees into the
earth-filled structure. Twinned with
a second boat at a daycare center
in upper Austria, this work became
an action of cultural exchange and
understanding. In Korean sculptor Ri
Eung-woos /|||cn, variously sized
rings hung from a bridge over the
river. Reflected in the water, the
sculpture, which referenced the tradi-
tional Korean song Arirang, had a
dream-like quality that reinterpreted
the joy and sorrow of the song.
Cypriot artist Tatiana Ferahians
t||me c| 0||eo consisted of scis-
sors that she brought from home.
Woven together like a veil, they
framed the river and surrounding
landscape in metaphorical associa-
tions. As Ferahian explains, The scis-
sors as a symbol is drawn from Greek
mythology; Atropos, one of the Three
Fates, used scissors to cut the thread
of life. The work is a warning about
the hazards to nature that result
from human activity. Les Fujak, a
French duo, produced 3|oe ||cne|
3|oe, a blend of eco-Pop and Land
Art that resembled a huge Claes
Oldenburg- like record and stylus
made out of on-site materials.
Romanian Peter Alpar used giant
sections of bamboo to create flute-
like structures that could be played
by the wind or passersby. Attila
Pokorny transformed an upturned
tree into a stringed instrument not
unlike a harp, which viewers were
invited to play. For the artist, the
tree communicates a feeling of eter-
nity for each human being who plays
the chords, touches the sculpture,
and senses the connection between
materials, surfaces, and phenomena.
Ko Seung-hyuns tree/instrument |e
cono c| c |cocno 'ec| re-created
an ancient Korean instrument but
scaled it up into sculpture. Swiss
sculptor Maria Dundakovas H|no
cn Hc, produced sound through
carved stone: Each empty space
is an acoustic sound where the Ur-
sound of the Earth is stored.
Kees Ouwens, a sculptor who
designs traditional gardens in Japan,
created an evolving structure with
sisal, stones, and branches that
could be a nature cathedral or a
utopian city. When the water rises,
people can sit and contemplate.
Myriam du Manoirs twin shelters
made of beer bottles and mud
offered a colorful example of sustain-
ability and resource reuse. The roof
element of Kim Joo-youngs brick con-
tainer caught rain and diverted it to
a well. Park Hyung-pils fish, one
caught on a line, the other still swim-
ming, were a popular site along the
riverside, while Kim En-kyungs cono
c| t|ec|o|e, with its circle of stone
hands surrounding over-sized, Day-
Glo ants, captured the drama of
nature in a very unique, animistic
way that recalled the most ancient
aspects of Korean culture. As lively
a sculpture exchange as one could
find, the 2012 Nature Art Biennale
encouraged experimentation and
intercultural communication.
|c|n | 6|cnoe
Right: Thomas May, Five Person
Garden, 2012. Grass, fishing line,
cups, bamboo, wire cables, earth,
and steel 5 x 5 x 3 meters. Below:
Kim En-kyung, Sound of Creatures,
2012. Korean paper, color, masking
tape, and wire, 3.5 x 7 meters. Both
from Nature, Man, and Sound.
sculpture
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isc PEOPLE, PLACES, AND EVENTS
THE I SC TRAVELS TO NEW ZEALAND
From February 11 to 15, 2013, 120 collectors, patrons, curators,
sculptors, educators, and administrators from all over the world
gathered in Auckland, New Zealand, for the ISCs 2013 Inter-
national Sculpture Symposium: International Dialogue. A truly
international event, the symposium attracted attendees from
9 countries, as diverse as Australia, Egypt, Japan, Pakistan, the
United Kingdom, the United States, and of course, New Zealand.
Highlights included an opening reception at the Auckland Art
Gallery, collaborator and host for International Dialogue; an address
by collector Alan Gibbs and exclusive access to Gibbs Farm; 21
international presenters featured in five thought-provoking panel
discussions; trips to private collections, artists studios, Zealandia
Sculpture Park, and Brick Bay Wine and Sculpture Trail; guided
and self-guided gallery hops, public art tours, and a book release
for sculptor Gill Gatfield; a charted boat trip to Jo and John Gows
home at Connells Bay Sculpture Park, where the collectors them-
selves led tours; and a viewing of Sculpture on the Gulf, followed
by a sunset closing reception on Matiatia Bay.
Thanks to generous donations from event sponsors, the ISC
was able to offer this symposium at an affordable rate, and 57
self-identified artistsmore than 47% of total attendeeswere
able to attend. And in
a first for an ISC confer-
ence or symposium,
almost 75% of attendees
were at their first ISC
event. One participant
wrote: This is my first
symposium, and I have
enjoyed it immensely.
I hope the friendships
that have begun this week continue on, connecting us all globally.
I have been inspired and challenged and have become part of the
ISC family, which I had previously only known through reading
the magazine.
We want to thank everyone who joined us in Auckland. And
we would like to give special thanks to the many sponsors whose
contributions enabled us to make this symposium possible,
including ACCOR Hotels, Air New Zealand, Auckland Art Gal-
lery, Brick Bay Wines and Sculpture Trail, Richard & Christine
Didsbury, Jan & Trevor Farmer, Alan Gibbs & Gibbs Farm, Jo and
John Gow & Connells Bay Sculpture Park, and Media Sponsors:
ArtNews New Zealand and Sculpture on the Gulf.
1
Alan Gibbs welcomes the ISC to Gibbs
Farm.
2
Mia Rappel enjoys a sunny
day at Gibbs Farm.
3
Sculpture on the
Gulf, with Gregor Kregor piece on cliff.
4
Traditional Powhiri Welcome performed
by the Maori Cultural Performers at the
symposium opening reception.
5
Opening
reception at the Auckland Art Gallery.
6
Executive Director Johannah Hutchison
talks with symposium attendee Jan Gagacki
from Poland.
7
Symposium attendees
arrive at Connells Bay.
8
Jeff Thomson leads
a tour of his studio.
9
Graham Bennett
talks to symposium attendees about his
sculpture Reasons to Return at Connells Bay.
5 6 8
9
1 2
3
4
7
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___________________________
_________________________
_________________________

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