Sculpture 2010 03

sculpture
March 2010
Vol. 29 No. 2
A publication of the
International Sculpture Center
www.sculpture.org
Antony Gormley
Mel Chin
Saya Woolfalk
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EVE INGALLS
547 West 27th St., Suite 301
New York, NY 10001
212-367-8994
Hours: TuesdaySaturday 126 pm
www.soho20gallery.com
Drawing Earth
March 2 March 27, 2010
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As this issue of Sculpture hits your hands, the deep freeze of winter will
be behind us, a hint of spring will be in the air, and some of you will
be planning a trip to London for the ISCs 22nd International Sculpture
Conference. The conference will be held April 79 and is presented in
collaboration with the University of the Arts London. In addition to
the conference, on Friday, April 9, the ISC will host its annual Lifetime
Achievement Award gala in London, honoring Phillip King and William
Tucker.
The conference addresses the question, What is Sculpture in the
21st Century? and features keynote addresses by Antony Gormley,
Robert Storr, and Lucy Orta. In addition, there will be a reception at
Tate Modern, admission to the Henry Moore exhibition at Tate Britain,
workshop demonstrations at Chelsea College of Art and Design, the
return of our popular ARTSlam sessions, a gallery hop, and, of course,
a number of engaging panel discussions addressing current topics.
Please visit <www.sculpture.org> for more details.
The staff and board of the ISC are very excited to bring these activi-
ties to such a wonderful international city of art. Hosting such events
internationally has proved challenging in many ways. The vast majority
of Sculpture readers are in the United States, and while international
content has become increasingly important in the magazine, on our
Web site, and through the ISCs Board composition, our non-U.S. mem-
bership is widely spread around the globe. In fact, we currently have
members in over 80 countries. We hope that the conference and award
presentation will attract the attention and interest of sculpture com-
munities throughout Europe and that members from other parts of the
world, including the U.S., who have otherwise been looking for just
the right reason to visit London, will also be able to participate.
How people value events of this nature, spend their discretionary
income, and support philanthropic causes are all very different in vari-
ous parts of the world. Differences in philanthropic incentives through
local tax systems is a particularly difficult issue, because registration
fees and ticket sales usually cover only a portion of the ISCs confer-
ence and Lifetime Achievement Award presentation costs, so the ISC
relies on individual, foundation, and corporate support to make these
programs affordable for participants and successful for the organization.
Thus, these events in London will be something of a test of the ISCs
ability to operate physically around the world.
Recognizing that the cost of attending a London-based conference
for our members in the U.S. will be significant, and that the cost of
attending the Lifetime Achievement Award gala is often too high for
many of our members, I am going to randomly offer two seats at the
Chairmans table for this years LAA presentation to conference atten-
dees from the U.S. If you are interested, e-mail me at <jkanter@
sculpture.org>.
I hope to see you in London.
Josh Kanter
Chairman, ISC Board of Directors
From the Chairman
4 Sculpture 29.2
ISC Board of Directors
Chairman: Josh Kanter, Salt Lake City, UT
Chakaia Booker, New York, NY
Robert Edwards, Naples, FL
Bill FitzGibbons, San Antonio, TX
David Handley, Australia
Paul Hubbard, Philadelphia, PA
Ree Kaneko, Omaha, NE
Gertrud Kohler-Aeschlimann, Switzerland
Marc LeBaron, Lincoln, NE
Patricia Meadows, Dallas, TX
George W. Neubert, Brownville, NE
Albert Paley, Rochester, NY
Russ RuBert, Springfield, MO
Walter Schatz, Nashville, TN
Sebastin, Mexico
STRETCH, Kansas City, MO
Steinunn Thorarinsdottir, Iceland
Boaz Vaadia, New York, NY
Chairmen Emeriti: Robert Duncan, Lincoln, NE
John Henry, Chattanooga, TN
Peter Hobart, Italy
Robert Vogele, Hinsdale, IL
Founder: Elden Tefft, Lawrence, KS
Lifetime Achievement
in Contemporary
Sculpture Recipients
Magdalena Abakanowicz
Fletcher Benton
Louise Bourgeois
Anthony Caro
Elizabeth Catlett
John Chamberlain
Eduardo Chillida
Christo & Jeanne-Claude
Mark di Suvero
Richard Hunt
William King
Manuel Neri
Claes Oldenburg & Coosje van Bruggen
Nam June Paik
Arnaldo Pomodoro
Gio Pomodoro
Robert Rauschenberg
George Rickey
George Segal
Kenneth Snelson
______
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Departments
14 Itinerary
22 Commissions
24 Up and Coming in London by Ana Finel Honigman
80 ISC News
Reviews
72 Berkeley: Human/Nature
74 Atlanta: Martijn van Wagtendonk
74 Boston: Charles Jones
75 New York: Don Porcaro
76 Cincinnati: Thomas Macaulay
76 Houston: The Art Guys
77 Seattle: West Edge Sculpture and
MadArt
78 Toronto: Kai Chan
79 Tokamachi City/Tsunan Town, Japan:
Echigo-Tsumari Art Triennial 2009
On the Cover: Antony Gormley, Blind Light,
2007. Fluorescent light, water, ultrasonic
humidifiers, toughened low iron glass, and alu-
minum, 320 x 978.5 x 856.5 cm. Installation
view at Hayward Gallery, London. Photograph:
Stephen White, London, Antony Gormley.
Features
26 Being the Void: A Conversation with Antony Gormley by Karlyn De Jongh
32 Working By Any Means Necessary: A Conversation with Mel Chin by Jeffry Cudlin
40 We Are the Landscape: A Conversation with Steven Siegel by John K. Grande
46 Saya Woolfalk: The Harmonics of Dislocation by Sarah Tanguy
52 Doubt and Other Serious Matters: A Conversation with Daphne Wright by Robert Preece
58 Collecting Specimens: A Conversation with Lynn Aldrich by Collette Chattopadhyay
46
sculpture
March 2010
Vol. 29 No. 2
A publication of the
International Sculpture Center
Sculpture March 2010 5
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6 Sculpture 29.2
S CUL PT URE MAGAZ I NE
Editor Glenn Harper
Managing Editor Twylene Moyer
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Design Eileen Schramm visual communication
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York), Marty Carlock (Boston), Jan Garden Castro (New
York), Collette Chattopadhyay (Los Angeles), Ina Cole
(London), Ana Finel Honigman (Berlin), John K. Grande
(Montreal), Kay Itoi (Tokyo), Matthew Kangas (Seattle),
Zoe Kosmidou (Athens), Angela Levine (Tel Aviv), Brian
McAvera (Belfast), Robert C. Morgan (New York), Robert
Preece (Rotterdam), Brooke Kamin Rapaport (New
York), Ken Scarlett (Melbourne), Peter Selz (Berkeley),
Sarah Tanguy (Washington), Laura Tansini (Rome)
isc
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About the ISC
The International Sculpture Center, a member-supported, nonprofit organization
founded in 1960, advances the creation and understanding of sculpture and its
unique, vital contribution to society. The ISC seeks to expand public understanding
and appreciation of sculpture internationally, demonstrate the power of sculpture
to educate, effect social change, engage artists and arts professionals in a
dialogue to advance the art form, and promote a supportive environment for
sculpture and sculptors. Members include sculptors, collectors, patrons, educa-
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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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14 Sculpture 29.2
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Dia at the Hispanic Society
|eu 'c||
Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster
||co| /||| :3, .o:o
While the YBAs were making a spec-
tacular splash in the early 90s,
Gonzalez-Foerster and other eone
c||||e ||cn,c|, including Philippe
Parreno and Pierre Huyghe, were
quietly producing ambitious, less
object-centric work that exploited
innovative combinations of media.
Inspired by film, literature, and
Modernist architecture as well as art
history, Gonzalez-Foerster gained a
reputation for projects like ecn:e
oe |cocu ||, using sound and light
to construct immersive environments
with an exquisitely subtle sense
of atmosphere. Thanks to her moody
Unilever commission at Turbine Hall
last year, her participatory stagings
and interventions are gaining a
wider audience. Her new site-spe-
cific installation serves as an annex
for the Hispanic Societys research
library, augmenting its holdings
of Iberian and Latin American litera-
ture with new texts placed in three
large-scale dioramaseach
one depicting a different terrain: the
tropics, the desert, and the North
Atlantic.
Tel: 212.989.5566
Web site <www.diaart.org>
Govett-Brewster Art Gallery
|eu ||,mco||, |eu /ec|cno
Zhang Peili
||co| |c|:| :,, .o:o
Other high-profile Chinese artists
have developed signature styles
and recognizable themes, but Zhangs
output is steadfastly elusive and
discontinuous. No obvious thread,
except perhaps the act of repeti-
tion, unites his diverse projects,
which have ranged from video and
installation to painting, sculpture,
and performance. Through obses-
sively repeating gestures, he raises
questions about temporality and
duration, whether physical or for-
mal, highlighting unpredictability,
impermanence, discontinuity, and
uncertainty. This exhibition of new
media works focuses on / 6o|
c| H|no (2008), a five-channel video
installation that offers a breathtaking
parable on urban development and
architectural striving in the face of
inevitable change.
Tel: + 64 6 759 6060
Web site
<www.govettbrewster.com>
Hammer Museum
|c /ne|e
Rob Fischer
||co| /||| :, .o:o
Fischer salvages furniture, windows,
mirrors, books, and other materials
from abandoned buildings and junk-
yards and reconfigures them into
large-scale sculptural environments
that re-weave past histories. For
the Hammer, he has recycled wooden
floorboards from the gymnasium
of a derelict school in southern Min-
nesota to create a labyrinthine mural
that winds around sculptures made
of hand-painted and screen-printed
signs and panes of glass. Inspired
itinerary
Above and detail: Dominique Gonzalez-
Foerster, chronotypes & dioramas.
Left: Zhang Peili, A Gust of Wind.
Bottom left: Rob Fischer, Bullriders
Advice.
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by the American mythology of the
road trip, with its aura of freedom
and self-discovery, his overlapping
and intersecting composition maps
a fantastical roadway, a monument
to an idealized and eternal wander-
lust.
Tel: 310.443.7000
Web site
<www.hammer.ucla.edu>
Institute of Contemporary Art
3c|cn
Krzysztof Wodiczko
||co| |c|:| .3, .o:o
For three decades, Wodiczko has
stretched definitions of public art to
address political, social, and psycho-
logical issues. His innovative pro-
jectsfrom a controversial hybrid
cart/shelter for homeless people
to a series of interactive nomadic
instruments that assist homeless
and immigrant operators with sur-
vival and communicationfocus
attention on what usually goes
unseen or ignored. He is perhaps
best known for his interrogative
designs, large-scale, outdoor pro-
jections on public landmarks that
engage in pointed political critique
(Wodiczko got into trouble for a
1985 projection of a swastika on the
South African embassy during an
anti-apartheid protest). |e /e|e|cn
||ce:|, his new projection-
based work, gives voice to soldiers
in active combat in Iraq, as well as
to Iraqi civilians, using their shared
experience of chaos and confusion
to shed light on images and stories
that might otherwise remain in the
shadows.
Tel: 617.478.3100
Web site <www.icaboston.org>
Kunstmuseum Wolfsburg
Hc|||o|, 6e|mcn,
James Turrell
||co| /||| ,, .o:o
Since the 1960s, Turrell has devoted
his career to diverse manifestations
of an immaterial medium, working
toward a new, space-defining form of
light art. The Wolfsburg Project is his
largest-ever walk-in, museum light
installation, covering an area of 700
square meters and reaching up to
the buildings glass roof. One of his
Ganzfeld Pieces, the hollow con-
struction of 3||oe| 3c|oc is divided
into two interconnecting and empty
chambersthe Viewing Space and
the Sensing Spaceflooded with
slowly changing colored light. A
steep ramp leads down into a sub-
lime bath of light that dissolves sur-
rounding detail into a dazzling field
of perceptual disorientation. While
the light reveals and refers to noth-
ing beyond itself, it interacts with
color and space to create an envelop-
ing atmosphere that has to be felt
with the eyes. In addition to this tour
de force, the museum is also present-
ing a selection of Turrells work, from
the early Project Pieces to the
recent Tall Glass Pieces.
Tel: + 49 (0) 5361 2669 0
Web site <www.
kunstmuseum-wolfsburg.de>
Maryland Institute College of Art
3c|||mc|e
Warren Seelig
||co| |c|:| :!, .o:o
For Seelig, the idea of a textile is
magical and conceptual. Through
the accumulation of thousands of
intersecting threads, he sees the
growth of an energy field, which for
me [is] organic and alive. His early
experience with weaving (he was
one of the young artists featured in
Jack Lenor Larsen and Mildred
Constantines hugely influential 70s
traveling exhibition The Art Fabric:
Mainstream) still informs his
approach to art-making. This show
features three main bodies of work:
the hand-woven and manipulated
wall works of the 1970s and early
80s, the skeletal/skin spoke and
wheel sculptures of the 80s and
90s, and the recent Shadowfields,
idiosyncratic, hybrid forms that
Above: Krzysztof Wodiczko, The
Veterans Project. Top right: James
Turrell, Bridget's Bardo. Right:
Warren Seelig, Blue Oval.
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itinerary
16 Sculpture 29.2
explore matter and light, as well as
preparatory sketches, models, and
samples.
Tel: 410.225.2300
Web site <www.mica.edu>
Museum of Contemporary Art
|cme
Urs Lthi
||co| /||| ,, .o:o
A pioneering Swiss conceptualist,
Lthi gained recognition in the
1970s with gender-bending self-por-
traits and provocative installations
treating the body and identity. His
subsequent photos, sculptures, and
installations continue to use the
self as a means to explore universal
human concerns. In Just Another
Story About Leaving, a new project
for MACRO, Lthi brings a new
sculpture into the Eternal City of
sculpture and documents its journey
through various layers of time and
space. Injected into places of every-
day life, this self-portrait confronts
the past with the present in a
search for place and belonging. In
the exhibition, photographs of Just
Another Sculpture for Roma in its
various situations follow a trail of
meditations on memory, the value
of time, and personal testimony.
Tel: + 39 (0) 6 6710 70400
Web site
<www.macro.roma.museum>
Museum of Contemporary Art
,one,
Olafur Eliasson
||co| /||| ::, .o:o
Eliassons complex investigations at
the intersection of human percep-
tion and natural phenomena com-
bine stunning visual pyrotechnics,
conceptual sophistication, and sci-
entific curiosity. His constructions
use geometric and crystalline
forms, light projections, and natural
materials such as water and plant
matter to shift the viewers sense
of place and consciousness, creating
atmospheres in which to encounter
what he calls devices for evaluat-
ing the experience of reality. From
mirror passageways to waterfalls,
to indoor rainbows, these works
immerse viewers in alluring, illusory
spaces that investigate meteorologi-
cal conditions, optical cognition,
and the passage of time.
Tel: + 61 2 9245 2400
Web site <www.mca.com.au>
National Gallery of Victoria
|e||co|ne
Ron Mueck
||co| /||| :3, .o:o
Muecks figures are so life-like that
we expect them to begin breathing.
Veins, wrinkles, sagging flesh,
moles, body hair, and rashes: every
detail has been crafted to such per-
fection that the remarkably convinc-
ing results border on troubling.
Mueck, who began his career making
marionettes, does not strive to
reproduce reality; imitation and illu-
sion become doors to the uncanny
rather than tools of the familiar. As
unsettling as his figures may be
in their hyper-realism and altered
scale (from the gargantuan to the
minute), they still inspire a strong
emotional response. The shock of
the first glance is gradually replaced
by the dynamics of sympathy and
identification. This show, the Aus-
tralian artists largest to date in
the southern hemisphere, includes
four new sculptures.
Tel: + 61 3 8620 2222
Web site <www.ngv.vic.gov.au>
Neuberger Museum of Art
|o|:|ce, |eu 'c||
Tania Bruguera
||co| /||| ::, .o:o
An interdisciplinary artist working
in the ephemeral, experiential fields
of installation and performance,
Bruguera creates convergences of
art, politics, and life that explore
urgent issues of exile, displacement,
and instability, as well as our indi-
vidual and collective responses
to them. Probing the subtlety and
seductiveness of power, her work
addresses what she calls the frag-
ile balance between ethics and
desire. Bruguera is certainly willing
Top left: Urs Lthi, Self-portrait with
empty hands. Left: Tania Bruguera,
Poetic Justice 2. Top right: Olafur
Eliasson, One-way color tunnel.
Above: Ron Mueck, Woman with
sticks.
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to tempt the bounds of propriety in
her explorations of human behavior
and weakness; last year, per-
formances in Cuba and Colombia
generated heated controversy with
their calls for democracy (denounced
by the Cuban government) and dis-
tribution of cocaine. Her first muse-
um showpart of her Neuberger
Prize awardfeatures powerful
installations from the past 20 years,
as well as regularly scheduled per-
formances.
Tel: 914.251.6100
Web site <www.neuberger.org>
Philadelphia Museum of Art
||||coe|||c
Cai Guo-Qiang
||co| |c|:| .:, .o:o
Conceived as a tribute to the late
Anne dHarnoncourt, former direc-
tor of the PMA, Cais multi-part
project explores the passing of time,
memory, and attendance on the
past. Fallen Blossoms opened with
an explosion event (shaped like an
unfurling flower) on December 11
and continued with a residency at
the Fabric Workshop and Museum
that produced two new works: |me
:|c||, a gunpowder drawing sub-
merged in flowing water and left to
wash away, and |c| |me |||e |||e c
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memorative tapestries woven by a
group of Miao tribe artists in resi-
dence at the FWM (through March
1). The PMA show features ||||
|cce, a series of gunpowder
drawings offering a meditation on
the seasonal cycles of life, death,
and rebirth, as well as )) 6c|oen
3cc|, an installation whose ele-
ments float in space like shimmer-
ing leaves in an imaginary river.
Tel: 215.763.8100
Web site
<www.philamuseum.org>
Philadelphia Museum of Art
||||coe|||c
Bruce Nauman
||co| /||| !, .o:o
Naumans work is motivated by ideas
rather than attachment to a par-
ticular medium, originating with
an inquiry into how perception is
shaped and how meaning is con-
veyed. His recent sound works, which
debuted at the Venice Biennale,
are no exception. In |c, and 6|c|n|,
shown here for the first time in the
U.S., the days of the week are recited
by a range of participants following
Naumans carefully modulated com-
binations. The voices differ in lan-
guage, as well as in rhythm and pro-
gression, adding up to a space-
encompassing orchestration of sound
as moving, forceful, and unrelenting
as a Nauman performance. Three of
those early performance films, each
exploring space through the system-
atic and repetitious movement
of the artists body, are also on view.
Tel: 215.763.8100
Web site
<www.philamuseum.org>
Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum
|eu 'c||
Anish Kapoor
||co| |c|:| .3, .o:o
Kapoors geometric and biomorphic
objects seem to come from another
world, a realm of almost impossible
purity, lightness, and beauty. But
there has always been a tension in
his work that undermines the har-
monic perfection: roughness intrudes
on refinement; messy internal
implications qualify austere voids;
and made matter threatens to dis-
solve into the unmade. His site-
specific Guggenheim commission
explores a new materialraw,
industrial Cor-ten steel. Seemingly
compressed into the surrounding
space, the sculpture challenges
architecture and viewers alike with
its improbable scale and forbidding
volume. But there is more to see
than the exterior. A staircase in an
adjacent gallery leads to a window-
like breach in the steel that opens
into the absolute darkness of a
boundless void. The title offers a key
to the experience: |emc|, can
never be seen in its entirety, its allu-
sive form remaining a composite
mental construction.
Tel: 212.423.3500
Web site <www.guggenheim.org>
Top left: Cai Guo-Qiang igniting a
gunpowder drawing at the Fabric
Workshop and Museum. Left: Bruce
Nauman, Giorni. Above and detail:
Anish Kapoor, Memory.
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18 Sculpture 29.2
Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum
|eu 'c||
Tino Sehgal
||co| |c|:| :o, .o:o
Sehgal constructs situations, com-
plete with people, that focus on the
fleeting gestures and social sub-
tleties that define lived experience
rather than the material aspects of
conventional art-making. Informed
by his studies in dance and econom-
ics, his ephemeral works consist
only of the interactions among their
participants and are not documented.
For the Guggenheims 50th-anniver-
sary celebrations, he has created a
mise- en-scne filling the entire
rotunda. Quasi-sculptural, choreo-
graphed movement transforms the
ground floor into an arena of spec-
tatorship, while the spiraling ramp
hosts direct verbal interaction
between museum visitors and
trained participants.
Tel: 212.423.3500
Web site <www.guggenheim.org>
Tate Modern
|cnocn
Michael Rakowitz
||co| |c, ,, .o:o
Rakowitzs The worst condition is
to pass under a sword which is not
ones own investigates the influ-
ence of Western science fiction and
fantasy on Iraqi military and scien-
tific activities during the Saddam
era, revealing the hidden links con-
necting the dictators vision to |c|
Hc| and Jules Verne. As Yaelle Amir
said of the projects New York show-
ing (:o||o|e, November 2009),
Rakowitzs well-researched work
paints a haunting and mind-bog-
gling view of reality. The details are
scary, but then again, Saddam was
not the only leader in world history
to direct real-world strategic and
policy decisions according to fantas-
tical, oracular, or paranoid trajecto-
ries; he certainly wont be the last.
Tel: + 44 (0) 20 7887 8888
Web site <www.tate.org.uk>
Wiels
3|oe|
Felix Gonzalez-Torres
||co| /||| .,, .o:o
One of the most influential artists
of his generation, Gonzalez-Torres
mixed political activism, emotional
affect, and deep formal concerns in
a wide range of media, often using
ordinary objects as his starting
point. His most well-known works,
the piles of candy and stacks of
paper offered as take-away sou-
venirs, are premised on instability
and potential for changesculp-
tures without a determined or spe-
cific form. The result is a profoundly
human body of work, intimate and
vulnerable, that destabilizes many
supposedly certain dogmas (the art-
work as fixed, the gallery as a place
to look but not touch, and the artist
as ultimate form-giver). This retro-
spective, which includes both famil-
iar and rarely seen works, uses
an experimental exhibition format
indebted to the artists radical con-
ceptions of the art experience.
Tel: + 32 (0) 2 347 30 33
Web site <www.wiels.org>
Top left: Michael Rakowitz, Victory Arch (Strike the Empire Back Series). Left:
Felix Gonzalez-Torres, Untitled (Golden). Above: Solomon R. Guggenheim
Museum, site of Tino Sehgals live-action sculptural performance.
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Tidal Song
New Rochelle, NY
Tidal Songs presence, says Catherine Widgery, is one of light,
color, and movement rather than physical mass. Her complex
work has transformed a prosaic steel and glass pedestrian bridge
over New Rochelles busy Huguenot Street into an engaging sen-
sory environment. The bridge connects a parking structure to the
retail area of Trump Plaza, a 40-story luxury building. As project
facilitator Jodi Moise of JMC Art Partners describes, most visitors
are shoppers or residents who park there. During the day, they
experience Tidal Songs interactive sound effects and color, while
after dusk, they are immersed in a light and sound program.
Outside, passersby and drivers see the glowing lights and color-
ful glass.
Commissioned by the City of New Rochelle and Cappelli Enter-
prises, Tidal Song connects the city to its nearby coastline.
Widgery noticed that there was almost no evidence of connec-
tion to the coast in the town center. Wave forms areabout energy,
vitality, and universal rhythms. With Aaron Cuthbertson, a
sound designer, and Roger Smith Lighting Design, she embedded
motion-sensor-activated waves of light and sound within the
bridge. She also designed a pattern of mouth-blown (fabricated
by Glasmalerei Peters Studios of Paderborn, Germany) and etched
(by Atelier St. Marc of Montreal) glass squares, affixed to the
windows of the bridge with translucent silicon. She created the
wave form from squares to link it to the urban visual vocabulary
a fluid counterpoint to that ordered grid.
The lights flow across cool shades of purple, blue, and aqua.
Widgery describes the sound effects as underwater sounds,
slow and deep[and] simple enough[to be] compatible with
each other when mixed in response to the movements of differ-
ent people. The lights include several different programs trig-
gered by pedestrians: rain falling, waves coming togetherand
moving back to the sidesThese run in a sequence when no one
is on the bridge. Widgery enjoyed watching early visitors, par-
ticularly children, timing their footsteps to land where the next
piece of light would go.
1onv StAttAku
Ghost Train
Watford Junction, U.K.
Located at the core of a busy interchange, Tony Stallards Ghost
Train is a site-specific light sculpture and contemporary land-
mark commemorat[ing] [Robert] Stephenson. The work, com-
missioned by the Watford Borough Council after local residents
22 Sculpture 29.2
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Left, top and bottom: Catherine Widgery, Tidal Song, 2009. Mouth-blown
stained glass, etched float glass, lighting, speakers, and motion sensors, 12 x
120 x 14 ft. Above, top and details: Tony Stallard, Ghost Train, 2009. Steel,
cross-fading LEDs, lighting, landscaping, and plantings, 500 square meters.
commissions
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initiated a regeneration project,
is sited inside a traffic circle at
Bushey Arches, a still-function-
ing railway viaduct designed
by Stephenson in 1834. Ghost
Trains placement under one
of these arches in the center of
the roundabout makes it highly
visible to drivers and passers-
by (though not directly accessi-
ble to pedestrians). Stallards
low-maintenance, high-impact
work responds to the challenges
of the site while honoring its
history.
One of Stephensons huge
brick arches touches down on
either side of the circle. The
central light element of Ghost
Train connects two blind por-
tals that lead to nothing but the brick of the arches; their faux
entrances are delineated by a projecting steel faade reminiscent
of a bisected train car. Widely spaced uplights trace a path across
the paving between the portals, mirroring the exact path of trains
on the viaduct above. Additional LED lighting accentuates Stallards
simulated train entrances and illuminates the viaduct archway.
The lights, in a spectrum of blue and violet, cross fade from
one to the other in a cycle of approximately one minute (very
slowly), so that a driver entering the circle will just compre-
hend the shift; drivers caught in traffic jams (extremely com-
mon) will observe the process as a subtle light work. Stallards
landscape design mixes hardscape (where the viaduct blocks the
sunlight) and hardy plantings chosen for their color and mini-
mal upkeep. Ghost Train turns a dilapidated intersection into
a visually compelling environment that highlights early train
development, evolution in infrastructure, and tracesleft by
history[on the] contemporary world.
Snck Itncu
The River That Flows Both Ways
New York
The first section of the High Line (from Gansevoort Street through
20th Street), Manhattans newest public park, opened in June 2009.
Originally built in the 1930s and used until 1980 as an elevated
freight train platform through the West Side, the re-purposed train
bed now offers visitors a new perspective on the city. Like the park
itself, the High Lines first public artwork, Spencer Finchs The
River That Flows Both Ways, reinforces historical connections
while raising awareness of often-overlooked surroundings. The title
is a translation of Muhheakantuk, the Lenape name for the river
(it flows both ways because of tidal influences). Sited in a semi-
enclosed, former loading dock between 15th and 16th Streets,
Finchs seven window bays support 700 differently colored panes
of glass, in shades of blue, gray, green, and muddy brown.
Finchs works meticulously evoke their surroundings. To create
The River That Flows Both Ways, he spent a day floating on a
tugboat in the Hudson, photographing the water every minute for
700 minutes, from approximately 9 a.m. through 8:45 p.m. From
each image, he chose the color of a single pixel and had sheets
of film fabricated in the selected colors. These sheets are sand-
wiched between two panes of glass in the windows. The result-
ing wall of variegated, translucent color not only reflects how
the Hudson changed throughout a single day, but also recalls the
general sparkling of water in daylight. In a video by Thirteen.org,
available on Creative Times Web site, Finch says, Like all
water, the Hudson is constantly changing, so basically, to make a
pictureis impossiblemy solution was to do it 700 times and
hope thatI get closer than if I did it just once. Finchs work,
sponsored by Friends of the High Line, Creative Time, and the
New York City Department of Parks & Recreation, is scheduled
to be on view through at least June 2010.
Elizabeth Lynch
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Juries are convened each month to select works for Commissions.
Information on recently completed commissions, along with quality
35mm slides/transparencies or high-resolution digital images (300 dpi
at 4 x 5 in. minimum) and an SASE for return of slides, should
be sent to: Commissions, Sculpture, 1633 Connecticut Avenue NW,
4th Floor, Washington, DC 20009.
Top and details: Spencer Finch, The River That Flows Both Ways, 2009. Glass and
colored film, 15 x 134 ft.
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The Young British Artists
surged to prominence in the
90s on the energy of their irrev-
erent work and fearless use
of Londons ample cheap and
unpolished space. Since that
time, Hirst, Emin, and their
crew have become world-class
established art stars, and the
city that once provided a play-
ground for them has grown pro-
hibitively expensive for emerg-
ing artists and aspiring curators.
Sculpture and installation
artists have been particularly
disadvantaged by the diminish-
ing availability of affordable
space in the capital. Yet a few
plucky dealers and innovative
artists are carving out places
for a new generation of British
artists who work in three
dimensions. The recession T
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brought into play Londons
deep reserves of chutzpah and
community spirit, qualities
often overshadowed during
boom times by curators with
blockbuster budgets.
While London still boasts
handsome and hip taste-making
spaces such as White Cube,
Timothy Taylor, Maureen Paley,
Sadie Coles, and Haunch of
Venison, the biggest news is the
emergence of Peckham as a new
art hub. Peckham is a gritty,
multi-cultural, working-class
South London borough best
known for its highly publicized
crime problem, which makes it
a prime incubator for an emerg-
ing art scene. And its proximity
to Goldsmiths and Camberwells
means that many young artists
live in the area. However, it has
only recently been garnering
positive attention for a cluster
of upstart galleries presenting
some of Englands best young
talents. British critic Arsalan
Mohammad ruefully asserts, It
was always likely that British
art would recover from its post-
YBA slump in a manner as rad-
ically refreshing, thrilling,
and unforeseen as the arrival of
Hirst, Emin, et al., had been at
the beginning of the 1990s. But
few could have predicted that
the revolution would start in
Peckham. The leader of the
pack spearheading Peckhams
unlikely emergence is Hannah
Barry, a 25-year-old dealer who
read art history at Cambridge
and founded her eponymous
London gallery three years ago
in a derelict warehouse with a
30-year-old Bavarian cultural
historian named Sven Mnder.
Although they started their ven-
ture with no financial backing,
they have become a genuine
force on the London art scene
thanks to their gumption, wit,
strong eye, and solid sense of
scale. For the Venice Biennale,
the Hannah Barry Gallery took
up temporary residence in a
Up and Coming in London
by Ana Finel Honigman
Left: Molly Smyth, Motion towards
Collapse, 2009. Breeze blocks and steel
rods. Below: James Capper, Skidder,
2009. Steel, batteries, winches, lights,
seat, switches, and controls. Both
shown at the Hannah Barry Gallery.
24
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Smyths partially erected wall
of concrete bricks; James
Balmforths Failed Obelisk, a
four-meter-high mortar, wood,
steel, and foam board structure
with its apex precariously situ-
ated atop a coiled metal spring;
and floor paintings by Matt
Holroyd.
Showing a similar spirit, the
Sassoon Gallery, also in Peck-
ham, is the brainchild of Ben
Sassoon, the owner of Bar
Story, a bar with music and per-
formances. The small, dome-
shaped gallery specializes in
showing work by artists from
the surrounding art schools in
week-long solo shows. Area 10,
run by University of the Arts
alumnus Dimitri Launder, has a
similar relationship with nearby
art schools. Based in a 25,000-
square-foot disused warehouse
behind the landmark Peckham
library, the Area 10 Project
Space serves as a platform for
artist-run ventures in all forms,
from performances to exhibi-
tions. And Peckham Space, a
socially conscious arts organiza-
tion founded in 2008 and
specifically geared toward pro-
ducing art by locals about the
area, will open a new building
in the summer of 2010.
While Hannah Barry is
a prime example of a gallery
starting from scratch and grow-
ing to command well-deserved
attention and space, others are
also using very little to make
their own statements. Twenty-
six-year-old dealer James
Tregaskes is hosting salon-style
shows in his small Chelsea
apartment; 23-year-old Henry
Little has transformed a former
Victorian-chapel-turned-TV-sta-
tion in St. Johns Wood into an
art space where he presented
200 works from 17 artists on
a budget of 6,000, which he
earned from odds and ends;
and artist/guru Matthew Stones
ad-hoc salon-cum-art collective
has become an institution on
the London art scene.
A precursor for this develop-
ment might well be the humble-
seeming Subway Gallery, which
opened in 2006. The 25-square-
meter space, founded by artist
and curator Robert Gordon
McHarg, occupies a 1967 kiosk
in a pedestrian subway below
the Edgware Road/Harrow Road
crossing. The space is too tiny
to show much sculpture, but it
functions as an installation
in itself. Although walk-ins are
welcome, most commuters
rushing to catch a train during
the gallerys 11 a.m. to 7 p.m.
operating hours only glance at
the exterior. It is a bit of a fish-
bowl, says McHarg. But real-
ly, the main motivation is to
make the subway a nicer place
to walk through. By extension,
spaces like Subway make all of
London more welcoming and
exciting.
tiny white studio, dubbed The
Peckham Pavilion, off the
friendly Via Garibaldi and suc-
cessfully offered work in all
media priced between 500 and
5,000.
This past June, Hannah Barry
erected a sculpture park on the
roof of an under-used munici-
pal car park for the third show
in the Bold Tendencies series.
The opening night had more
than 1,000 attendees who came
to see the art and lounge in a
caf designed by recent archi-
tecture graduates Lettice Drake
and Peckham-native Paloma
Gormley (Antony Gormleys
daughter). Among the works by
17 participating artists were
Motion towards Collapse, Molly
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Above: James Balmforth, Failed Obelisk,
2009. Mortar, wood, steel, and foam
board. Shown at Hannah Barry. Above
right: View of Game Show, at
Subway Gallery, with Robert Gordon
McHargs figure of Charles Saatchi,
2008. Right: Subway Gallery.
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Antony Gormley understands the human body as a place of mem-
ory and transformation. Most of his early works are based on the
process of casting his own body, which functions as subject, tool,
and material. His more recent works deal with the body in
abstracted or indirect ways and are concerned with the human
condition. These large-scale works explore the collective body and
the relationship between self and other, mediating between indi-
vidual and collective, containment and extension, what can be
seen and what can be sensed. Making unexpected connections
across ideas and disciplines, these works have moved the domain
of figural sculpture beyond the confines of the physical body to
include interaction with the surrounding world, whether that be
the matrix of community, space and energy, memory, or built
form. Gormleys objects and installations test the limits and syntax
of sculptural expression, calling for ever greater participation and
engagement in the service of human freedoma goal that
he took to newheights in One &Other, on Londons Fourth Plinth.
Sean Kelly Gallery in New York is hosting a solo show of Gormleys
work (March 26May 1) to coincide with the installation of Event
Horizon in and around Madison Square Park, March 26August 15.
Antony Gormley
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Above: One & Other, 2009. Fourth
Plinth Commission, Trafalgar Square,
London. Opposite: Blind Light (detail),
2007. Fluorescent light, water, ultra-
sonic humidifiers, toughened low-
iron glass, and aluminum, installation
viewat Hayward Gallery, London.
A Conversation with
BY KARLYN DE JONGH
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Karlyn De Jongh: You have stated that, in your work,
you re-invent the body from the inside, from the point
of view of existence. Would you explain?
Antony Gormley: The classical image of the male sculp-
tor is somebody who does a lot. I try to do very little. I
am not acting on the worldIm staying with it at its
moment of origination. Why should I act as if this kind
of determinism is the only way for sculpture to have a
call on our attention? Can we start with being itself as
the primary focus? Why act on a material outside my
own sense of being when the material question that I
face every day is embodiment?
We can leave aside the questionable notions of I,
me, and mine and instead ask: In this dual condi-
tion of beingboth material and consciouswhat do
I, as a conscious mind, have to deal with? It is the
materiality of the body. Can I as a sculptor deal with
this as my first material? I think of myself as a sculptor,
working from the core condition of embodiment. Im
not making another body; Im starting with my own,
the only bit of the material world that I inhabit. To that
extent, Im working from the other side of appearance.
Im not trying to make a copy; Im not trying to repro-
duce an image. The work comes as a byproduct of a
moment of being taken out of the stream of duration
in which all conscious beings are living.
KDJ: Many of your works are casts of your own body.
How do you understand the casts in relation to your
own existence? Are they extensions of yourself?
AG: Its a trace. You could say that theres desperation
as a result of being uncertain about the continuity of
time. But its also an abstraction. By continually remak-
ing the primary condition of being, remaking the body
that I didnt choose but arrived with, the question of
what that body is is multiplied into something no
longer mine.
KDJ: So you dont see your sculptures as you?
AG: No. But my body isnt mine, either. Its a temporary
tenancy. So, yes, Im in this body at the moment, but I
could be out of it as much as Im out of any of those
iron ones out there. Its a mistake to be saying my
body. We call it my body like we call it my house
or my citythats a convention, not a truth.
KDJ: Is that why you incorporate the viewer, why a
viewer can be the subject in your work?
AG: Its good to hear that you, as a woman, suggest it
is so possible. Some women have problems with the
fact that this is a penis-loaded body. My reply is that
the way Im using it has little to do with heroism or the
norms of maleness. In fact, the work questions gender
determinism.
KDJ: If you cannot speak of your body but only about
a body, does it really matter whether it is a male
or a female body?
AG: Theres a very early work that I will never sell, called Seeing and Believing
(1988). Its a pregnant male body, a body without breasts. Theres a hole at the
navel. You could say that this work deals with the notion of indwellingthat
is, the idea that the body is itself the first form of architecture, the first shelter,
and that all bodies come out of other bodies, it is the material condition from
which we look out or reach out through our perceptual bridges to the wider
world, a receptive state.
KDJ: How does your abstract notion of the body relate to physicality?
AG: You need the physicality of your own body to see it, thats the point. We
could think that the work is about making singular objects, like the piece that
Im making for Lelystad, the Netherlands. But increasingly, the work is becom-
ing a field phenomenon. It dissolves from a body defined by skin and mass into
a field. Or it dissolves simply through the multiplication of elements. In both,
you have to look around. If you look at this bubble matrix cloudyou have to
really look around it. You need to use your own existence as the necessary reg-
ister. The body that really counts is the body that has the mind in it. In the end,
the viewer does the workand it may be more than Duchamps 50 percent.
KDJ: You have described your work with the concept of space, and you just
mentioned the body as a first form of architecture. What do these concepts
mean? How would you explain space and architecture in relation to body?
AG: This is such a big question. Take, for instance, the Newton/Leibniz debate
about space as the container of all things, an almost God-like conditionality.
Leibniz suggests that this space is not a basis, but simply the relation between
objects. We dont need to think about the ultimate conditionality, but infinity
is the thing that gives sculpture its authority. The position of an object or
group of objects has a relation not only with all other objects, terrestrial and
celestial, but with everything that lies beyond the perceptual horizon.
I think the biggest challenge that Ive faced for the whole of my working
practice is how you reconcile imaginative space grounded in the body with
space at large. In very simple, early works, like Full Bowl (197778), theres a
void in the core. You get a sense of indeterminacy with the edge of this mass
of bowls that could go on forever. It suggests that theres a relationship
between an intimate and an extending void.
The same is true of the relationship between the space that we enter when
we close our eyes and space at large. If I close my eyes when I am awake and
ask the question, Where am I now? I am somewhere, but the world as a
visual object is not here. The space of consciousness is contained in a physical
space, and these two spaces somehow have to be reconciled. The latest
attempt that Ive made to reconcile them is Blind Light (2007), where you get
the same sensation but within light. If you went outside in the garden and
closed your eyes in the middle of a starless night, you would be in a darkness
28 Sculpture 29.2
Full Bowl, 197778. Lead, 6 x 17 x 17 cm.
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inside a darkness. If you worked on it, it
could be brought into some harmonic rela-
tionship. With Blind Light, you walk across
a threshold into a room with 7,000 lumens
of bright daylight where you cant see any-
thing. You cant even see your hands or
your feet. Youre awake, youre conscious,
youre in space, but the space no longer
has any coordinates. This is the closest Ive
come to a physical reconciliation of these
two spatial realities.
KDJ: You have mentioned your work as
being ahistorical, but you also say that
time is actively present. How do these
aspects go together?
AG: I mean that Im not a painter of daily
life. Im not an artist who wants to reflect
this time in a mirroring manner. Im very
interested in time, but I dont want my work
to derive its value from where it sits in some
historical continuum. I would like the work
to be useable as an instrument now and in
the future. In a way, Im trying to make an
astrolabe that will function for as long as
consciousness is around. Im not interested
in making an instrument will be obsolete in
five years because someone has invented a
new chip. And I am not interested in making
pictures of now, but in engaging your now.
Im intensely interested in history as a
resource for a future that we might imag-
ine. But that doesnt mean that I want to
refer to it directly. Its very important that
Im familiar with it. We live in a time of the
present-ness of history like no other. In a
way, this puts a certain burden on us to
make things that have a dialogue with the
depth of history. Im basically telling you
that Im never going to be a fashionable
artistand I feel very lucky.
KDJ: You have said that art should have a
residue of art history but be approachable
for someone whose visual world is articulat-
ed by mass media. How do your works reflect
on both these worlds? Do they demonstrate
a truth about contemporary existence?
AG: I dont have to do anything about it: to
bear witness you have only to acknowledge
your condition. Im living now, and the
tools that I useand I use them allare
physically and mentally different from the
tools that my parents used or that my chil-
dren will use. Every room in my studio has a computer. Were inventing in software that
allows me to use digital technology at its most advanced. Even though its taken us four
years, the work that Im making for Holland represents the very forefront of whats possible
in engineering terms. In all of these ways, I am absolutely of my time.
KDJ: How is the question of the bodys belonging related to the locations where you pre-
sent your work? How important is location and the history of a location for you?
AG: I try to start with the place. A body comes into it even if the body isnt figured. Take,
for instance, Another Place (1997), the 100 figures on the beach. Its interesting that even
though this work has now found a permanent site on the banks of the Mersey outside
Liverpool, it absolutely came out of the Wattenmeer. I wouldnt have made it without that
extraordinary place: the mouth of the River Elbe where the tide comes in over seven kilo-
meters. The quality of light and the way that the sky is reflected in the earth convey a feel-
ing of being at the edge and, at the same time, of being in the now. It is not sublime and
romantic in the traditional sense because big container ships continually cross the horizon,
the same as at Crosby Beach.
Im always juggling the moving place of embodiment and a particular place. There may
be anxiety about the displacement of art from the structures of higher values. Some con-
sider it a loss, but I think of it as freedom. We no longer need the frames, the plinth, the
institution. Isnt that the most wonderful thing, to make something that can simply be?
Whether it stands or lies or sits or falls, its just a thing that exists and endures in space
and time, in darkness and in light, in rain and in shine: a thing in the world, really in the
world. It needs no excuse; it needs no mediation; it needs no protection. For me, to be
given a place is an amazing thing. If somebody says, Here is a room, here is a field, here is
Sense, 1991. Concrete, 74.5 x 62.5 x 60 cm.
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a mountain, here is a city, make something
for it, my heart leaps.
KDJ: This spring and summer, Event Horizon
will be exhibited at New Yorks Madison
Square Park. Thirty-one life-size casts of
your body will be placed on pathways and
sidewalks, as well as on rooftops in the
Flatiron District. Will people be able to see
the rooftop sculptures?
AG: Event Horizon is a scopic field. The den-
sity and height of the buildings in Man-
hattan intensify the tension between the
palpable, the perceivable, and the imaginable. We are positioning the sculptures as close
to the edge of the buildings as possible. The work will enter into and out of visibility, and
that is the point. The field of the installation should have no defined edges, and the ambi-
tion is to play with the very particular topology of Manhattan, making people more visually
aware of their own environment, and indeed the edge of it, above their heads. What mat-
ters is the way in which the sculptures infect the collective space of the city. The works
subject is New York, its inhabitants, and how their perception of their environment
changes as a result of these foreign bodies. Its about the searching gaze, the idea of look-
ing and seeking, and in the process, re-assessing your own position in the world. The occu-
pants of the buildings around Madison Square will be aware of these liminal positions as
they look from their windows.
KDJ: Event Horizon has already appeared in London and in Rotterdam. How do different
locations affect the work?
AG: It treats both the context and the body as a test site, interrogating the unconsidered
nature of collective space. In every installation of Event Horizon, the nature of that space
is different, and the subjective reaction of the inhabitants of that infection is different.
30 Sculpture 29.2
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Above: European Field, 1993. Terra cotta, 40,000 ele-
ments, 826 cm. high each. Below: Another Place,
1997. Cast iron, 100 elements, 189 x 53 x 29 cm. each.
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By being a vertical animal, with the cerebral cortex as the highest point in the body, the
human being has separated itself from most of the biosphere. That verticality is very much
part of this work. Its still asking the same question: Where does the human body belong,
now that we have separated ourselves in terms of specification from those other, more
enmeshed, animals? This pertains to our eco-niche as much as it does to our body-type.
The human body is now detached and in some senses might belong more to space than to
the earth.
KDJ: You have described the body as a place of memory and transformation. In One &
Other, the transformation of the body seems literalthe body changes every hour. Or do
you understand transformation in a different way?
AG: This was an exercise in self-representation, as well as in interrogating the status of the
statue. Art is being replaced by life. But it also has to endure, in time and in the elements,
so it was very important that it be a completely uninterrupted occupation of the plinth for
the 100 days. The idea of this was a slow frame change that nevertheless maintained a
continuity. We started with the individual person and ended up with some idea of the col-
lective body. Every person who contributed to the time-line of representations changed it.
KDJ: How do you see this living sculpture in reference to your other work?
AG: All of my work demands a certain kind of projection. You could ask: How do we project
our lives into the silence and stasis of sculpture? How do we use it as a focus for the things
that we have and it lacks (freedom of movement, thought, and feeling)? In a sense thats
exactly what One & Other becamean isolated and idealized space of public sculpture
becoming the place of personal projection.
KDJ: Is your love for edge locations related to their circumstances, natural or otherwise?
AG: A space outside is at the top of my list of sites. To allow an object to be without shel-
ter, to make something that shares the condition of a tree or a mountain, is a great inspira-
tion. The condition of a museum takes the object out of its context, out of where its work-
ing, where it has a life, and puts it where it can be read. And the function of the museum
is to catalogue and conserve objects that have ceased to have a life. If the museum, and
the ability of objects to be categorized and read, becomes the matrix by which things are
given value, we have lost our faith in the potential of art to affect life and in the idea that
human beings can have some part in evolution.
This is what worries me about the human project at the moment. We are so involved in
our ability to turn the object into a symbol that we no longer live directly. The power of art
to break through the symbolic order, the inexorable process of things becoming words, is
its most critical function. I believe that dumb objects can catalyze our lives and allow us to
sense existence more intensely.
KDJ: Does your work confront an awareness of being, of existing?
AG: I think so: That thing exists; therefore,
so do I. The only excuse for my sculpture to
exist is that it reinforces the existence of
the receiver. I would say that the work is
empty: it has little symbolic function, no
narrative function. Its only power is, in a
sense, what it makes the subject reflect or
project. And the subject is always in the
viewer. These things work on place as a
form of acupuncture. They are simply a way
of making place count. Whats already
there is the thing that matters. I think that
they are a reversal of the old obsession with
figures and grounds; these repeated body
forms are essentially void grounds, the
place where somebody once was, and any-
body could be. The work inverts the figure-
ground relationship: the ground becomes
the figure, and the figure becomes place or
space, a void space where the viewer by
implication could be one with himself.
I think of art as always being a communi-
cation with that which has not happened, a
communication with those we will never
meetand maybe even not with human
beings. Some of the most beautiful things
that human beings have ever made are not
about communication between us but
about a need to communicate something
that is in a way unconceivable, impalpable,
ineffable, and incommensurablethat lies
on the other side of our perceptual horizon.
Karlyn De Jongh is a writer and curator living
in the Netherlands.
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Wall of Fundreds designed in New Orleans and installed at Safehouse in the citys St. Roch neighborhood, 2006ongoing. Part of Operation Paydirt.
Working By Any
Means Necessary
Mel Chin
A Conversation with
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BY JEFFRY CUDLIN
Mel Chin refuses to be pinned down, hemmed in, or otherwise restricted from pursuing whatever concept
fires his imaginationin whatever medium seems appropriate. The Houston-born artist began his career
making sculptures based on research into ancient cultures, social issues, and geopolitical subterfuges. But
after a 1989 solo show at the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in Washington, DC, he appeared to
jump track, abandoning object-making for the less familiar territory of conceptual art based on botany, ecology,
and hands-on collaboration with scientists and government officials. In his redefining project Revival Field
(1993), he attempted to reclaim 60 square feet of toxic soil in a St. Paul, Minnesota, landfill. To do this, Chin
and his collaborator, Rufus Chaney, relied on plants called hyper-accumulators, which can draw heavy metals
like zinc and cadmium out of the earth through their root systems. Though Chin has subsequently been
tagged as an environmental artist, he has followed many divergent paths, also working in recent years with
comic books, animated films, and even commercial television.
He is currently working on a new environmental reclamation effort. The Fundred Dollar Bill Project/Operation
Paydirt consists of equal parts conceptual art gesture, school lesson plan, and exercise in magical thinking.
Chin is asking children across the country to draw fake $100 billsFundredsand submit them to volunteer-
led collection sites in public schools. Once three million of these Fundreds have been generated, an armored
car equipped to run on recycled vegetable oil will visit each collection point, pick up the childrens artwork,
and eventually deliver all three million Fundreds to Congress. The goal is to make a one-to-one exchange
with legislators, securing 300 million actual U.S. dollars to clean lead-contaminated soil in New Orleans
following a protocol developed with Howard Mielke of the Tulane/Xavier Center for Biomedical Research.
Through the project, Chin hopes to highlight problems with lead poisoning that have plagued New Orleanss
poorest neighborhoods since well before Hurricane Katrina.
Interior of the New Orleans Safehouse with Fundreds, 2006ongoing.
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Jeffry Cudlin: It seems that throughout your career, youve been in the process of putting
down one medium and picking up another one. Ive heard you say that you initially
envisioned yourself becoming a heroic painter or sculptor, but that you found yourself
falling in love with pottery, much to your surprise. What drew you to clay, and how did
that formative experience lead you to the present day, when youre dependent on no
particular medium?
Mel Chin: Nothing drew me into pottery; it was a mandatory, one-semester class. I
begrudgingly resigned myself to leaving the super-status of eventually becoming a
great artist and just having to deal with this material. It was a pretty amazing lesson,
because the moment you say no to something can be the moment when the world
completely reverses on you. With ceramics, when you really get into it, you become
a psycho-ceramicista crackpot. But what the medium gave me, I definitely needed.
First of all, I realized that it was something that I could not do, and that was humbling.
Second, the instructor was able to convey meaning almost in a Zen way through the
various processes.
You might not think of ceramics and conceptual art together, but pottery really did
open up a whole investigation of conceptual art for me. I learned it early on by studying
Zen, and also Suzuki, and then finding some writers discussing Duchamp, and making
my way to conceptual art from there. Once that all opened up, I realized that its not
the old no problem, no solution situation. Art, for me, is not about the medium. It
really all comes down to the message. And the message must be communicated by my
patented Malcolm-Quattro-X method: not just by any means, but also by any
method, any action, or any material necessary. Im not dropping or abandoning one
medium in favor of another; Im always striving to find the right material for capturing
the specific weirdness of the present moment.
JC: Youve often cited your Hirshhorn show as a turning point, a catalyst that radically
changed the kind of art you make. You realized that while you dearly loved making
marvelous objects, you needed to let go of them. How did you reach that decision?
MC: I didnt decide. I just heard a voice call-
ing in my head and started walking that
way. The voice led me to the process of
thinking that brought me to Revival Field, a
project about science, botany, and reclama-
tion. There is a misunderstanding here,
though. If were still working in the world
of ideas, concepts can lead you around to
making a painting or a sculpture againor
a performance, or a photograph, or a film.
The field has only expanded for me, it does-
nt limit the type of work I can do at all.
JC: A lot of your earlier work was research-
based, making cultural or art-historical ref-
erences that went back thousands of years,
to ancient Greece, to China. Now your work
is engaged with at-risk communities, up-to-
the minute political developments, and
electronic media. It seems like your time-
line gets shorter and more immediate with
each passing year. What brought you so
fully into the present tense?
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Safehouse, 2006ongoing. Existing house, stainless
steel, steel, wood, plywood, 12,000 brass thumb-
tacks, 6,000 hand-drawn Fundreds, and mixed
media. Part of Operation Paydirt, located at 2461
North Villere St., New Orleans.
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MC: I dont know that my work has changed in exactly that way. Recently I contributed
a study to Creative Times 33rd anniversary. They asked me to write an article on power.
My contribution, because I didnt really want to write an article, turned out to be a
drawing, a meditation on the beginning of time, from the Big Bang to the true vacuum
meta-stability disaster 100 trillion years from now. I was studying the end of all time,
where the gradient to sustain information is eradicated.
So, with that one piece, focusing on a point trillions of years after the entire human
race has been annihilated, I blew your premise out of the water, right? Life delivers things
at various focal lengths. You zoom in, you pull out again. I dont think that theres a
specific preference or intention: its whatever the present moment seems to call for in
terms of perspective. Any distance from the subject can eventually lead you to thinking
about the whole of human historyeternity, even.
JC: Your way of working has to do with freedom, working, as you say, by any means neces-
sary. Does that scare off people who could be in your cornerdealers, gallerists, collectors,
institutions? Do you have to rethink who you can bring into your corner to advocate for you?
MC: Yeah, my corner mans not very good. Ive been beaten up enough to know that. But
Im not beaten down by whatever distance I might seem to be imposing between my work
and the art market. If you start expanding your worldview, immediately you exceed the art
world, the galleries and institutions, and the whole spectrum of possibilities of engage-
ment gets larger. Even though a piece can be very discreet, it can also be very expansive.
I think its understood: with every liberation comes an entrapment. The creative process
is sometimes based on breaking out of jail. You have to escape the prison that youve
just created for yourself. You cant make bail just through the support of dealers or gal-
leries or museums. Sometimes theres a wall between different pieces, different phases.
You have to find a way to escape the conditions that youve created. Its all my own fault,
of course. I cant blame anybody else.
JC: Youre in North Carolina now, having removed yourself from New York and L.A.
MC: Working on different projects in different placesand needing physical space to
create larger-scale piecesthats where it started. After working with prime-time TV
in Los Angeles, mostly spending time on
planes, shuttling back and forth, I realized
that the studio is good for certain aspects
of my production, but that there are other
places for production as well. North Caro-
lina has become the place of personal iso-
lation, safetya haven in which to live
a life separately from things. It gives me
room to unpack, to get back into things.
JC: This seems ironic to me. Youre making
art out in everyday life, but youre still
returning to a monk-like studio practice,
away from the noise of the world. Does
being so publicly engaged require even
more of a solitary space?
MC: I think were using too traditional
a notion of the studio here, of the artist
removing himself from the world. That
isolation doesnt necessarily foster a dis-
engaged attitude. Ive found that I can be
in the most isolated circumstances and
be all the more expansive in my thinking
and engagement because weve all been
opened up, not just through our technolo-
gies, but also through political philosophies
that show us how were not really free at
any given time. Anyone whos lived in New
York knows that it can be the loneliest
place on the planet, even while youre in
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Left: Operation Paydirt, 2006ongoing. Soil sample
collection in New Orleans 8th Ward, part of an
art/science project to clean up lead pollution in the
city. Above: Revival Field, 1993. Reclamation of a
hazardous waste landfill in St. Paul, MN, sculpting
the site ecology by using plants to detoxify the soil.
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the thick of it. Sure, maybe Im addressing the need for a state of mind where inven-
tion can occur. Right now, North Carolina is a place where I can find that state of mind,
but one day that might no longer be the case.
JC: Modern art often looks like a series of refusalsrefusal of heroic mastery, refusal of
the seductive properties of a medium, even the refusal to lay things out easily for an
audience, insisting on a kind of confrontation instead. While your move from object-
maker to conceptual artist seems like a kind of refusal of a particular way of working,
its ultimately made your work more populist, more open, maybe more accessible.
MC: I dont think my work ever says no. It says maybe. Probably yes, probably no, there
has to be some wiggle room. Once something becomes dogmatic, its no longer inter-
esting. Once you arrive at a formula, its no longer useful.
As far as the notion of refusing, I understand Modernism as stemming from a deep
belief in universal possibilities that were unrealized in the world and needed to be uncov-
ered somehow. We know where thats led us. We cant just think about art anymore.
We have to be engaged in the political world. Or at least I doI shouldnt say that for
anyone else except myself.
JC: While your work seems approachable, humorous, and maybe even skeptical of trying
to remake the way people live, it still aims for major transformations. In the case of the
Fundred/Paydirt project, were talking about $300 million possibly entering peoples lives.
How do you balance humor and skepticism with such ambitious expectations?
MC: First off, the humor is there only because without it, life would be such a depressing
reality that it would be difficult to stay and keep going. Second, my work has never been
about anything but changing oneself. If you approach everything with a critical eye
or mind, then the world will reveal itself as something thats quite impossible to change.
The human ecological track record is
so horrific that I dont have much hope for
it, really. But the moment that youre
captured by some other possibility, the
moment when you discover art thats new
to you, other philosophies, other music
those moments are very rare, but they
transform you. Art can change who you
are. I dont think about changing the
world; I think about changing myself.
JC: Still, youre talking about cleaning up
the soil of New Orleans, a big action, a big
change in the lives of thousands, and it
looks like you might pull it off. Thats not
just personal transformation.
MC: Well, Im going to deliver, lets say
that. I cant pull off Operation Paydirt
alone, and thats the point. But we can pull
it off. This project is less and less about me,
and more about how I need to create this
opportunity for engagement and need
someone else to follow it. Thats how itll
happenwith other people, it wont hap-
pen otherwise. Without the cash, the artis-
tic currency thats being created nation-
wide, I will have very little chance of
changing myself, much less anything else.
There is the possibility of changing the
conditions in a place, conditions that com-
promise lives, close down possibilities. Im
not going to say that this project will defi-
nitely make everything better or worse, but
it will give people more options than they
had before. And thats where I find the art
of it: Im just catalyzing possibilities that
werent actual before. Thats what Id do for
myself. There will be necessary political
wrangling, physical transformations, and
economic pragmatism layered into this. I
persist only because I know that it will proba-
bly transform the world and make it better
for myself as well. I hope it will, anyway.
JC: So your art is entirely selfish.
MC: Isnt that weird? If I look at myself crit-
ically, it probably always is. Were delu-
sional if we try to say its not. But maybe if
we knew ourselves a little better, we could
operate from a better place within that
selfishness, right? I think we need to be
introspective: Why are we doing this? Why
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Pluto: Projection and Permutation, 1987. Anthra-
cite coal, bitumen, arsenical copper, porcelain, tea,
ink, and alchemical gold, 36 x 35.24 x 28.5 in.
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am I trying to work in this place? For me, the conditions in New Orleans compelled this
project, spurred the problem-solving part of my brain, got me motivated. If I want to
identify whats in it for me, whats selfish, maybe at the end of the day, its the need to
take on the puzzle. This is a real problem, and I feel compelled to get to work and solve it.
JC: Are there moments in New Orleans when the immensity of what youre up against
overwhelms you? Now that youve been interacting with the St. Roch neighborhood
and know its rhythms, do the place, its poverty, and its violence continue to shock you?
MC: Well, youre more comfortable with the people, youre familiar with the landscape,
but a lot of the things that people warned me about in New Orleanshow slowly things
move, how difficult it is to get any momentum going at allare true and never cease to
surprise me. At the same time, what really shocks me are all of the things that allow the
project to go forward anyway. Were doing pretty well. And its not just New Orleans.
When I was touring the schools in Arlington, Virginia, I saw children, who I wouldve
thought were too young, embrace the project and understand the intensity of the prob-
lem. Seeing them understand the project completely was one of the more gratifying
moments. There is a connection in this project between the beginning of one creative act
and the beginning of another. Kids from everywhere, from Mongolia to Brooklyn, making
these artworks, expressing themselves, just getting down to it straight away and draw-
ingit means something. It reinforces commitment.
New Orleans itselfI hate to say it, but every day is not a holiday in the streets where
Im working. Every day is a deep struggle. Of course, there is life, there is humor, and
all of these other things. But I am aware that I have options that many people do not.
There are moments of extreme violence that are just inexplicable. We can talk about
the physical, nameable aspectsgang wars, guns, drugsbut there are elements you
perceive in the thick of it that are just
hard to comprehend.
JC: If art, for you, is about making change
possible, its certainly easy to see the kind
of change youre trying to bring about in
New Orleans. But then I look at the GALA
project from the 90s, when you worked
with a collective of artists to build props
that appeared in 60 or so episodes of
Melrose Place. Your group peppered the
set with images, references, and political
speech that people might or might not
have noticed or understood. What kind of
change were you trying to catalyze there?
MC: Well, that was predicated on my stud-
ies of viruses and marine military assassins.
Understand that the world has been
absolutely transformed by covert strategies
employed by militaries, businesses, and
state apparatuses. And, of course, the
transformation usually works negatively for
those on the receiving end. Growing up and
being part of the New York scene in the age
of AIDS, I observed the horrible reality that
every other moment you have another
friend or fellow artist who diesyoure
quite aware of the power of a virus. It
leaves no one untouched. I began to think
about how the consequences of disease are
not unlike those that come about when we
take over other governments. Theyre
deeply negative, and the methodologies of
both are amazing, exacting in execution.
From there, you start thinking in terms
of art. The efficiency of the methodology
can be understood and maybe redeployed
via conceptual art. Thats where the GALA
committee comes in. Were moving into a
realm thats been deeply criticized by the
art world since at least the mid-1960s
commercial television, mass media, partic-
ularly prime-time commercial media. And
yet, were undertaking an empathetic
engagement. Were not necessarily a hos-
tile virus, there to subvert its message. The
question we asked was: Is there a way for
an art virus to enlarge the storyline of a
nighttime soap opera not only with the
consent but also the camaraderie of the
writers and producers?
38 Sculpture 29.2
The Opera of Silence, 1988. Wood, steel, hog hide,
operatic makeup, paper, human bone, wax, 66 x
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JC: So where does the work reside? If some-
one buys the collected DVDs, is that just
another phase in the life of the project?
MC: Yes, thats where it lives, and where
it will continue to live, if you discover it.
And its not just on DVD; the show is syn-
dicated to this day, in countries all over
the world. Were looking at a host that is
effective in transmitting its message over
and over again, perhaps mutating into
understanding as well.
JC: The GALA collective made one viral foray
into vernacular culture, but since then,
youve also created your own comic book
and an animated film, both based on the
events of September 11, 2001.
MC: Well, it was one of the major traumat-
ic events in American history. I was moving
back and forth then, going from New York
to Detroit, to Los Angeles. It was Septem-
ber 10, and I was with my friends in L.A.,
lamenting how everything used to be edgier,
how New York was now too damn safe,
thanks to the antics of Rudy Giuliani; then
the next morning, everything changed.
Going back to New York, walking toward
Ground Zero, I was stopped before I could
even get there. I was stopped by the
images of peoples loved ones, little pho-
tographs tacked everywhere. I turned to my
friend Anne Pasternak and said, Now hope
will have to be eradicated in some other
part of the world. The outcome of this grief
and unknowing and fear would be war.
And thats what brought about the graphic
novella, 9-11/9-11.
JC: Looking back to Chile in 1973, what kind
of a linkage were you trying to forge?
MC: I knew that we would enter into a new
war. We didnt know about the C.I.A. in
Chile. It hadnt been part of the American
historical record or consciousness, not until
the 1990s. I knew about it in the early 80s,
seeing Alan Francovichs film, On Company
Business. At that moment, in 2001, it came
back to me how my whole understanding
of the American political process had been
twisted by learning what we had done
in other placesthat we had perpetrated
a 9/11 of our own in Chile, many years
before, and that we continued to support that nightmare for 17 years. Im obviously not
saying that theyre related, certainly not directly. But my graphic novel was an attempt
to de-center our preoccupation with creating this 9/11 as our national tragedy. Because
that would create a nationalism that I knew would alter our relations with the world.
We have to extricate ourselves from this nationalistic agenda, which leads to eradicating
the hopes of others and not coming to terms with our own history. The film and the
graphic novella both attempted to make us get outside of ourselves at a time when we
were all about ourselves and our fears. It was a dramatic, horrific moment, but more
moments will follow if we dont understand our position in the world.
JC: Do you see a clear thread running through all of these disparate, very different-looking
projects? Certainly theres an ongoing effort to effect change. Do you worry that your career
might be perceived as a series of only tangentially related episodes?
MC: Do I have a constant uneasiness of not knowing what Im going to do next? Yeah,
thats closer to it. I typically have four or five different concepts in operation at any given
time. Right now, Im working on a very traditional bronze memorial for a museum, for two
women thinking about their mother. Its a very heartfelt, personal project. Theres that
commission, and everything Im doing in New Orleans, and the film were looking to dis-
tribute, and another film were working on now.
JC: Is there something you havent done yet that youre just itchingor even fearfulto try?
MC: Oh, sure, Im a terrible photographer. But, you know, all of these different disciplines,
the definitions are so expansive at this point, theres so much freedom, I neednt even
worry about that. You know, I am curious about math. Im terrible at it, maybe I could
do something with that.
Jeffry Cudlin is a Washington, DC-based artist, critic, and curator who serves as Director
of Exhibitions for the Arlington Arts Center in Arlington, Virginia.
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Rafetus Euphracticus, 2005. 2 views of fancy lin-
gerie with French and Iraqi arabesque patterns.
Steel, tulle, silk, and Parisian lace.
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We Are the Landscape
Steven Siegel
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A Conversation with
BY JOHN K. GRANDE
Biography, 2008ongoing. Mixed-media
project with no fixed endpoint or dimen-
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John K. Grande: Your sculptural production
has been considerable, with commissions
in numerous public and private venues.
Many of your projects approach sculpture
through process, with a sensitivity to the
specific environment. Can you give me a
few examples?
Steven Siegel: The suite of pieces for
Grounds For Sculpture presented a chal-
lenge because it is a very manicured set-
ting, not the sort of place where I normally
work. I did manage to find an out-of-the-
way place that was a little rough, and we
enlisted many peoplepaid staff and vol-
unteersto help with the project. Typically,
when I work on a site, the first thing I ask
about is the kind of free material that
might be available in large quantities. The
staff found a huge quantity of glass from a
nearby factory that was going out of busi-
ness. That became the starting point for
the work.
JG: Grass Paper Glass, the piece at Grounds
For Sculpture, presents cubes or contain-
ers that are, and contain, the raw product
refuse materials that you used to make
them. Do you consider this sculpture to be
a comment on economies of scale?
SS: Most things that we do as a species
have an enormous impact on the environ-
ment. When I went to see what was avail-
able for the project, there were 10,000
pounds of glass waiting. It was a challenge
to come up with a plan for materials that
were foreign to me. The entire project was
predicated on what I had to start with
the glass. Because the glass pieces were a
foot square, the thing that came to sug-
gest itself was a cube, and I decided that
three would be more interesting than one.
This glass was material that a manufacturer
had overproduced and was going to throw
out. Overruns and unusable material are
normal. If you look at the work, you are
looking at an infinitesimally thin slice of
the solid waste stream. The other thing
that Grounds For Sculpture does very well
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Grass Paper Glass, 2006. Grass, paper, and glass, 3
cubes, 8 x 8 x 8 ft. each. Work installed at Grounds
For Sculpture, Hamilton, NJ.
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Using pre- consumer and recycled materialsdiscarded newspapers,
crushed soda cans, empty milk containers, and shredded rubber
Steven Siegel creates public art and site-specific installations in natural
and urban contexts that reinvent the role of sculpture for an eco-con-
scious planet. Connecting art-making and environmental processes, he
builds impressive trash sculptures that reflect the deposit-and-decay
cycle that underlies the making of the land. His large boulders made of
compressed cans and plastic bottles and multi-layered newspaper ridges
awaken awareness of the sheer scale of consumer waste in a beautiful,
integrative way. Installed across Europe and North America, as well as
Asia, Siegels works prompt dialogue about society, landscape, and
formall with an eye for natures processes.
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is landscaping. The grass cube, for example,
has both internal and external irrigation
systems running through it.
Typically these projects require one or
two paid skilled people, but then we also
get a lot of volunteers. They can be stu-
dents, or they can be retired. It all depends.
It becomes a communal activity for several
weeks, and the work is designed, in part,
to meet the skills of the participants.
JG: The configurations of your works come
about as a result of getting to know a
place, the land that you are using. Do you
have a preconceived idea before you visit a
site like Yatoo, in Gongju, Korea, before
you start working?
SS: I will have an idea, particularly if I have
just learned something from a particular
process that I want to continue. I recently
did a paper piece near Mirabel in Quebec
that had a flat top, and this seemed like a
good starting point for the piece in Korea.
It is about evolution and process versus
concepthow things evolve over time.
JG: A lot of the art that I see these days is
extremely decorative. Much of it is really
about product and not necessarily process.
SS: It is being taught that way in the
schools. Students think a critique is when
an expert comes in and tells them whether
their work is good or bad. Not so. When I
visit, my job is merely to help guide them
to their own conclusions. There is such an
emphasis on concept and execution these
days that students cant articulate what is
actually in front of them. Typically they
want to discuss what they thought, or
what the assignment was, not what they
see. They are not living in the visual realm.
They are living in the conceptual realm.
JG: So, how an artwork communicates visu-
ally becomes secondary to the thought
processes that led to the final product.
SS: By necessity, the artwork cannot com-
municate by those means because it is
a freestanding object. Simply put, if your
ideas are so great and can stand on their
own, why bother making something visual?
The point is that the expression can only
be in the visual realm. And there are very
few new ideas.
JG: You recently made a piece in Wyoming. Does that use newspaper again?
SS: No. It is a configuration of 30 cubic yards of wood mulch, representative of my inter-
est in evolutionary biology. I call these works container pieces because their means of
organizing materials is more akin to biology than geology. There is more complexity and
more opportunity. Recently, my interest in science has moved toward life and evolution-
ary biology.
I have slowly been moving away from paper for 15 years, but the paper pieces are
popular. I will continue to do them as long as there are interesting sites in new places.
My discovery of paper as a medium 18 years ago grew out of an interest in sedimentary
geology. I was thinking about how we reintroduce materials back into the landscape,
specifically in landfills. What would geology look like in a few million years? I made the
first newspaper piece near my home in New York State and referred to it as New Geology.
I started with one newspaper and began stacking them. It was very labor intensive and
involved tons of newspaper, and it was very much about accepting the process. New
Geology was time-related if it was anything. Weather, climate, and the seasons all acted
on the piece. The paper would freeze solid in winter, fade and expand with the effects
of rain and forest light. The paper withstood a lot.
JG: You recently exhibited a new series at the Turchin Center for the Visual Arts in North
Carolina (2008) that addresses your interest in evolutionary biology.
Like a rock, from a tree?, 2008. Newspaper, 8
x 40 x 12 ft. Work installed in Gongju, Korea.
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SS: I completed Wonderful Life, a group of 52 wall pieces, six years after I accidentally
got into it. It is about the simple, cumulative changes that generate form, from genera-
tion to generation. There being no wolves, competition for mates, or climate change to
force natural selection in the studio, the artists eye served as the determinant, what we
used to call sensibility. The title is borrowed from Stephen Jay Gould. He described the
matrix of life forms found in the fossil record of the Burgess Shale in British Columbia as
containing a variety perhaps never surpassed in the history of our planet.
JG: The layering of our landscape includes manufactured refuse, so what we call natural
may, in fact, not be natural at all.
SS: I dont really believe in the word natural, because I believe that we are the land-
scape, not only by our physical presence, but also by the messes we leave and the way
we reconfigure all of the material around
usfrom the roadway to the recycling
of cans to nuclear waste. Our presence is
there in every molecule. My interest in
geology eventually evolved into the next
step. Many of the raw chemicals found in
the rocks eventually sparked life. Life as it
evolved became increasingly complex.
The first reproductive cell was infinitely
more complicated than any stone you will
find on the mountain. Life is more com-
plex, so as a metaphor to work from, it
enables one to organize materials in much
more complex ways. It opens up whole
new horizons. The generation of form is
paramount for me. All of my interest in
science, and the politics and social and
ecological issues, is there, but aesthetic
concerns are at the top.
JG: So your work is quintessentially sculp-
tural, with a sensitized understanding of
the specific environmental context. Is the
Wyoming piece more like a bioform?
SS: If your organizing principle is layering,
you limit the kinds of materials that you
can use: newspaper, flat stone, and maybe
some industrial materials. Life, unlike the
landscape, is not about layering. Life is
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It goes under, 2008. Wood mulch, wood chips, and
window screening, 250 ft. long. Work installed at
the University of Wyoming.
Zelig, from Wonderful Life, 200208. Mixed
media, 68 x 84 x 24 in.
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about containers. Starting with the atom, the molecule, the cell, a tree, even humans
all of these elements are containers. This means that you can stand up and function,
from your DNA right up to your eyeballs. It is all incredibly complex. Understanding how
all this is built through the process of evolution serves as an over-arching metaphor. It
goes under is part of a series that I have been working on for years.
I have come to believe that the evolution and refinement of a craft is very similar to
the evolution of a species. Natural selection, environmental influence, mutationthese
things are there. A craft evolves because it is easier this way, or that tree was in the way,
or we needed the water to stay off this part. There are parallels to the natural world.
Once a craft gets established, I get bored with it and want to invent another one.
JG: The Wyoming sculpture partly disappears and gives a sense of flow into the land-
scape.
SS: The original plan used a modular system, and the framework was prefabricated
in the museums woodshop. All of the sections were made in advance, to be assem-
bled on site, where they could be put together in whatever configuration I wanted.
We got about two-thirds of it framed, and the Laramie River flooded. For one week,
the site was inundated with water. We couldnt work anymore, and I was ready to go
home before it occurred to me that we could work on the other side of the water.
The piece appears to dive down into the water and come up the hillside on the other
bank. When the water receded, we went back and finished the first part. With no
water there, it looks like it dives down into the ground and comes back up at another
place, hence the title.
JG: Nature intervened directly in the Wyoming piece, something that I find fascinating,
particularly because it contributed to the process and final form of the work.
SS: I have discovered that when the site generates the form, it is more interesting. These
works are particular to the sites where they have been built.
JG: You mentioned a piece in Quebec. Is that in a park near Mirabel, north of Montreal?
SS: Yes. I was asked to do a newspaper piece. The people were so determined to make
this work, they put themselves out there every day. The trees configured the piece
as they did for my recent Korean work.
JG: Were the trees part of the support structure?
SS: No. I decided that a level top would contrast with the slope of the forest.
JG: So that relates to the skyline or light.
SS: It relates to horizon. If you walk through a landscape, you are vertical, or plumb.
When you look at a slope, you are aware it is sloping because your eyes are level. The
flat top on this piece sets off the land-
scape and everything around it. At Yatoo
in Gongju, south of Seoul, I did some-
thing similar. The sculpture is on the
steep hillside of Mount Yeonmisan.
There are huge boulders on the hillside
that make the piece.
JG: What are you working on now?
SS: I am currently working on a new studio
project, a single piece of indeterminate
length that should keep me busy for a few
years. It has the working title Biography,
and it is very crazy and exciting. It repre-
sents the evolution of an object within the
physical constraints of the object. It is a
timeline, like a landscape, with references
to many things that have interested me,
and it involves many of the materials that
I have used in the past.
JG: What is it that makes a sculpture work?
SS: I would like the visual arts to be appre-
ciated in the same way as music. If it needs
to be explained, it probably isnt very good.
Lets get rid of the verbiage, let it stand on
its own.
John K. Grande is a Contributing Editor for
Sculpture. He is Curator of Earth Art at
Canadas Royal Botanical Gardens. His most
recent book is Art Allsorts; Writings on Art &
Artists (2008), available at <www.lulu.com>.
His Web site is <www.grandescritique.com>.
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This one is flat, 2008. Newspaper, 7 x 25 x 10 ft.
Work installed in Mirabel, Canada.
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Saya Woolfalk
The Harmonics
of Dislocation
BY SARAH TANGUY
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No Place: A Ritual of the Empathics, 2009. Dance performance with Lauren Palmieri, Hilary Freeland, Brittany Sprung, Krista Scimeca, and Sara Senecal
with music by Kevin McFadden, installation at the University at Buffalo Art Gallery, NY. B
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her tale into a 30-minute video, Ethno-
graphy of No Place. Made with filmmaker
and anthropologist Rachel Lears, the video
was completed during a year-long residency
at the Studio Museum in Harlem.
Inspired by Thomas Mores 16th-century
Utopia (meaning no place in Greek),
Ethnography of No Place elaborates on
the future of the future. Part-human and
part-plant, the androgynous inhabitants
of No Place are at one with nature and
change color in tandem with their ongo-
ing metamorphoses. Rather than describe
the societal structure in classic anthropo-
logical fashion, Woolfalk and Lears present
vignettes of the inhabitants learning about
each other and undergoing their life cycle,
observed by an anthropologist/narrator
who feels displaced even while trying to
immerse herself. The ecosystem abounds
with everyday cast-offs given new life as
props and costumes la Pee-wees Play-
house. In the Prologue, the likes of egg-
shell cartons and Elmers glue bottles are
integrated into a freestanding, multi-panel
sculpture. Made from cardboard and painted
in DayGlo colors, it stands in front of a
Manhattan skyline. The narrator explains,
This portal is the threshold of their world.
Lets take a look at the glyphs. Dont worry
if its difficult at first. Come, follow me.
In Chapter Two, we encounter a No
Placean identified as the Self, surrounded
expunged. As Eastern philosophy meets
Western pragmatism and scientific inquiry
meets art-making, an open- ended opti-
mism infuses her work. Yet just beneath
the psychedelic colors and the bright blue
sky, an undeniable urgency murmurs. The
lampooning pageantry and cursive font
belie a call to action.
What began as an interest in toys and
behavioral learning is evolving into a larger
project of rejecting stereotypes and under-
standing the Other. With no clear beginning
or end, the projects elements, whether
artwork or performance, feed on each other
and foster further growth. The core con-
cepts are the chimera, a type of hybrid
animal with two or more different popula-
tions of genetically distinct cells, and shape
shifting. These notions, along with the
aesthetics of Disneys Alice in Wonderland
and Alices ability to figure her way out
of a situation, have continued to inspire
Woolfalk.
While earning an MFA from the School of
the Art Institute of Chicago in 2004, Wool-
falk presented Lovescape at Zg Gallery. The
installation featured her own soft-sculpture
toys as a way to explore the effect of role-
playing in childhood development, a pur-
suit triggered by reading Roland Barthess
Mythologies at Brown University a few
years earlier. Then, on a Fulbright in Brazil
in 2005, she studied the significance of the
carnival as an adult version of trying out
alternate personas. By 2008, she expanded
A kaleidoscopic transformation unfolds to
the soft and soothing drone of a narrator
as she guides the viewer through a mar-
velous land where humans, plants, and
objects engage one another. Barriers break
down. Identities cross-fertilize. Linear time
loses all relevance. Lucy in the Sky with
Diamonds meets Japanese anime to the
rhythm of a stylized Butoh dance. Visceral
anticipation rules.
New York-based Saya Woolfalk is part of
a rising phenomenon in todays global art
scene, an artist who brings much-needed
new energy to the utopian vision and inter-
disciplinary approach espoused by such
early 20th-century pioneers as the Dadaists
and the Bauhaus School. Born in Gifu,
Japan, to a Japanese mother and an African
American and Caucasian father, she is also
in a perfect position to chart an expanded
definition of cultural diversity and tackle
the sexual, racial, and gender issues ignited
by the culture wars of the 1980s.
Crossing drawing, painting, sculpture,
set and costume design, performance, and
video, Woolfalk transcends the confines of
conventional practice. Through a multi-
layered collaborative process, she takes the
stuff of everyday existence and assembles
an entire world, complete with beings and
a re-imagined nature. Not satisfied with
critiquing the current sociological land-
scape, she offers a tripartite vision of the
present, the future, and the future of the
future when all dystopian elements are
Lovescape, 2004. Mixed media, 8 x 20 x 15 ft.
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Referring to the portal, she asks: If such
architecture may be transported from one
world to another, how can we apprehend
its secrets?
Woolfalk, in keeping with the family
textile business, learned to sew from her
in her headdress. Chapter Four chronicles
her death as she makes her own lily-pad
tomb, curls into a fetal position, and returns
to the landscape. In a later sequence, two
juvenile No Placeans perform a mirror
dance of empathy after watching a video
about a pair of ancestors engaged in con-
flict and subsequent peace-making. In the
Epilogue, the narrator returns to this world
and ponders the implications of her journey.
by hand-knit plants and stuffed animals
against a backdrop of blue skies and rain-
bows. She wears mitts and a flesh-like
spandex suit that covers her body and
face and masks anatomical features. Her
dress is stitched together from various
patchwork petals, buds, and mammary
protrusions. In one sequence, she fulfills
the act of pollination by inserting a long
sinewy stamen into one of the fabric petals
Ethnography of No Place, 2008. Multiple stills from
video collaboration with filmmaker and anthropol-
ogist Rachel Lears, 30-minute film.
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an expanded consciousness on both
a cultural and an individual level. Done
in her signature, mosaic/coloring-book
style with added shades of Hieronymus
Bosch, the mural size triptychs, Epoch of
No Place: Land of the Pleasure Machines
(Volumes 1 and 2), depict Pleasure
Machines inside a bio-dome busy creating
genetic material that mutates on the
cellular level.
At the institute, Woolfalk engages
Empathics one-on-one in what she calls
Utopian Conjuring Therapy. Tapping into
their power to bring No Place into the
present, she studies their ability to
dematerialize into a simulated natural
setting when induced into a dormant,
trance-like state. Cosmological paint-
ings, generated from the Empathics free
associations, become actualizations of
maternal grandmother when they spent
summers together in Japan. Years later,
she found a parallel in the feminist, craft-
based movement of the 1960s and 70s.
The memory of bonding with her grand-
mother has blossomed in her most recent
endeavor, A Ritual of the Empathics, which
hinges on group solidarity and collabora-
tion among women. This installment of
Woolfalks narrative focuses on the pre-
sent and the Empathics, a fictional womens
collective whose members believe that the
future of No Place is worth inhabiting. It
begins with an Empathic discovering the
skeleton of a No Placean at a burial site in
the woods of upstate New York. From pre-
liminary research at a greenhouse, Wool-
falk learns that this contact has caused the
Empathics to mutate into plant, animal,
and human chimeras with dominant human
markers. Later, during a residency at Art
Omi, she builds an Institute for the Ana-
lysis of Empathy to conduct further study.
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A Ritual of the Empathics, 2009. Digital video, ani-
mation, and dance, 30-minute video.
The Institute for the Analysis of Empathy, 2008. Per-
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Conjuring Therapy, 2008. Blog, outdoor sculpture,
performance, and digital photographs.
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means to examine the present and re-eval-
uate the power dynamics of our cultural
norms. While the authors of fairy tales and
science fiction typically posit worlds just
beyond current reality, Woolfalk suspends
our disbelief with seemingly impossible sce-
narios where the extraordinary becomes
familiar and accessible. Like the Surrealists
before her, she sets ups jarring juxtaposi-
tions that break through our waking sleep
and begin to realize in material form the
dream of a utopian world. Ever curious, she
enjoys challenging herself and thrives on
discovery: Something is going on, but
what that is exactly, is not clear, as she,
a contemporary Oracle of Delphi, ponders
the future, a disturbed, intermediary
temporality aspiring for utopian perfection.
Sarah Tanguy is a Contributing Editor for
Sculpture based in Washington, DC.
from Ethnography of No Place, and again
in November 2009 as part of Performa 09.
Woolfalk believes that the paradigm of
the Other is shifting. While many female
artists and artists of color no doubt still
feel frustrated and marginalized, they now
have advocates in the museum world and
can insert themselves into the mainstream
to offer a more nuanced critique from the
inside. At times, they are interested in
changing the world and answering
the cry for something in which to believe.
Adapting the shared pillars of art and
anthropology to explore and understand,
Woolfalk studies her imagined, shape-
shifting Other in different temporal mod-
alities to debunk the exotic and the freak,
and ultimately, to learn about the self
and interpersonal relationships.
Under her imaginative spell, fairy tales
and science fiction persist as relevant
These paintings become the unintended
psychological destination of the Empathics
in the next phase of the project, when
Woolfalk collaborates with five dancers
from the University at Buffalos Theater
and Dance Department. Through improvi-
sations based on guidelines, a syllabus,
and paintings by Kandinsky, Rothko, and
Frankenthaler, they choreograph No Place:
A Ritual of the Empathics, using swatches
of brightly colored felt and rope. After a
presentation of the No Placean skeleton,
they dance an ecstatic ritual that ends with
them entering the paintings into the
Land of Pleasure Machines. The piece was
performed at the University at Buffalo in
early 2009, along with an installation of
costumed mannequins, sets, and video
No Place, 2009. Mixed media, view of installation
at the University at Buffalo Art Gallery, NY.
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Doubt and Other
Serious Matters
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Stallion, 2009. Marble dust and resin, 160 x 380 x 140 cm.
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BY ROBERT PREECE
Daphne Wrights work maneuvers things into what her
biographical statement calls well-wrought but delicate
doubt. Shifting between taughtness and mess, it sets
imagery, materials, and language in constant meta-
phorical motion. Using a wide range of materials and
techniquesplaster, tin foil, video, printmaking, found
objects, and performanceshe creates beautiful and
rather eerie worlds that feel like the threshold to some-
where new.
A Conversation with
Daphne Wright
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Robert Preece: You have often referred to doubt, a notion
emphasized by your biographical statement on the Frith Street
Gallery Web site. I see doubt in Domestic Shrubbery (1994), in
your plaster works, and in tin-foil works like Indeed Indeed (1998)
and Where do broken hearts go? (2000). These seem clear to me
because sound elements are clearly juxtaposed against an instal-
lation, and the sound magnifies and unsettles the visual illu-
sions. But where is doubt in the animal cast works? Have you
moved on?
Daphne Wright: This is a good question. First, the animal works
are more singular than the installation works, which have a nar-
rative that fluctuates around them. The animal works are clearly
sculptures, as opposed to sculpture-installations, and they are
more direct. Second, I think that doubt is within the animal-form
object itself. I find the objects to be contradictory in terms of what
is given and what is taken away. So, doubt is still there as a theme,
but its shifting.
RP: You could say that the doubt resides in ambiguity about how
the animals died and whether the poses in the works are authen-
tic. In Home Ornaments (200205), is the doubt hidden? Is it the
knick-knack versus artwork element?
DW: A little bit, but here Ive placed doubt with the owners. Theres
a detailed story behind Home Ornaments, but Ill try to explain in
brief: these works are the result of a public art commission related
to an inner-city redevelopment project of two apartment blocks
in a traditionally rough section of Glasgow. Instead of placing a
public sculpture outside the buildings, I proposed bringing the art
into peoples apartments. The works were inspired by my inter-
views with people in the area. For example, I had heard that a
number of pet birds had been released in the air when the previ-
ous residents moved before the demolition. A number of birds had
hung aroundand survived.
One edition of one of the objects was placed randomly on spe-
cially designed shelving in each flat. The owners were informed
about the objects via storytelling when they moved in. We left it
to them to do what they would with the objects. Some traded
them, some threw them away, some collected them. There was a
surge of interest by the owners after editions were shown at the
54 Sculpture 29.2
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Domestic Shrubbery, 1994. Plaster and continuous sound loop, 488 x 457
x 366 cm.
Born in Ireland and based in Bristol, England,
Wright has exhibited in several solo exhibitions in
Ireland and the United Kingdom, at the Limerick
City Gallery of Art (2006), the Sligo Art Gallery (2005),
Douglas Hyde Gallery in Dublin, and Frith Street
Gallery in London (2010, 2003, and 1998). She has
also participated in various group exhibitions at
venues such as the Hamburger Kunsthalle (2008),
the Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston (2000),
P.S.1 in New York (1999), Ikon Gallery, Birmingham
(1997), and Tate Liverpool (1995). Last year, she
exhibited Racehorse (2009) at the Visual Centre for
Contemporary Art in Carlow, central Ireland, and a
large-scale, video installation, Prayer (2009), at Quad
in Derby and Picture This in Bristol. Her most recent
show was on view at Frith Street Gallery through
February 2010.
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Gallery of Modern Art in Glasgow. So, the doubt is about worth.
Do these objects have a right to carry whats been given to them?
With the video Sires (2003), you approach it and dont know
the context of the bulls. You just see hoofs in motion. They appear
almost choreographed. Its large scale and placed above you, and
your head is physically down at the level of the hoofs. There are
questions about whether this is stressed or usual behavior for
the animalthat kind of doubt.
RP: Would you agree that in your earlier works, doubt was explicit,
while in the later works like the animal casts, doubt is expressed
more within the context of the works?
DW: Yes, I would.
RP: Your Frith Street bio also describes your works as shifting
between taughtness and mess.
DW: Taughtness here is taught out or properly, well-made.
Both taughtness and mess apply to the making and thought
process. Theres definitely mess with the earlier plaster and tin-
foil works in how they were made. A lot of times, people looked
at the works and said that they were very well-made. But actually,
Im not a good maker. The response would always surprise me,
because Im quite lazy in how I do things, and there are lots of
bad ends. The plaster and tin-foil works are not well-made, but
they appear to bethey give the surface of it. So theres doubt
here as well. With Domestic Shrubbery (1994), the craftsmanship
on the back of the work is quite rough and messy. With the tin-
foil Indeed Indeed (1998), I developed that process as I went
along. When you look at the work via a photograph, it looks
well-made, but it isnt.
RP: What about the imagery, materials, and language set in
constant metaphorical motion?
DW: Well, with Domestic Shrubbery and Indeed Indeed, a lot of
people kept asking what these works were about. In a sense, thats
what made the work function for meit couldnt be placed, the
interpretation kept shifting, and it wasnt set in concrete. Domestic
Shrubbery is almost like a relief of two-dimensional wallpaper with
occasional heart-shaped forms. In structure, there are distinctions
between the front and the back, which creates a space that
shouldnt really be there. There are also the cuckoo sounds,
alternatively mocking, excluding, including, and suffocating. Its
beautiful and then slightly claustrophobic. I had been reading
Henry James and Jane Austen and was interested in how they
depicted layers of doubt, falseness, and surfaces. Meanwhile
with Indeed Indeed, I referred to film sets in black and white
spaghetti westerns. The soundtrack has an actor with a theatri-
cal voice. I think of the piece as an unconscious vegetable state.
Then with Where do broken hearts go? (2000), I tried to show
metaphorical motion more evidently. And strangely, this work was
perceived to be more successful, because it was immediately
clearer to the audience. The sound piece consisted of three differ-
ent narratives that functioned within the work in a very prescribed
way. First there was the gun battle, then the broken hearts, and
then the child murdererwith prints around the installation
adding an emotional layer. These elements, in essence, floated
around in the space, and the narratives shifted only three times.
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Above: Indeed Indeed, 1998. Tin foil, glue, and continuous sound loop, 366 cm.
high. Below: Where do broken hearts go?, 2000. Tin foil, glue, resin, continuous
sound loop, and 9 continuous-tone photopolymer intaglio plates, installation view.
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But with Domestic Shrubbery and Indeed Indeed, the boundaries
werent as clearly defined.
RP: How you see motion and/or movement in the animals?
DW: It is still there, but its more straightforward, and singular.
For example, theres the Lamb (2006). If you dont live around
them, your perception is probably filtered through the media. Then
you see the lamb hung up by its hoofs, which is how a hunter
would carry an animal. There is all the weight of this knowledge
in the piece, and then the strange quality of the death mask, the
corpse, and whether the body is there or not there. Movement
and doubt are in there, but in a more sophisticated way.
RP: Why is doubt important to you?
DW: Because I think that is life. Nothing is what it seems. I also
think thats how I prefer things to be. It would be very disap-
pointing if things were singularhow awful.
RP: Youve gone from plaster to tin foil, with something underneath.
DW: The early tin-foil works are coiled, like ceramic pots. There
was nothing inside them, and that was really importantthat
these large objects be lightweight things. But with the cacti,
I coiled the tin foil first and then covered them with fiberglass
resin to get stability with the height.
RP: Were you experimenting with different shapes?
DW: I had a notion in my head. I started with smaller cacti, just
what was needed to make the piece work. Then there were cacti
that I got rid of. Also, I sawed off some of the arms because the
work needed that. Id make all these strips of tin foilits very
labor-intensivethen Id start building like I was making a clay
pot. Id build up maybe one to two feet, then Id mix up the
liquid resin, dip the fiberglass mesh into it, and then put that
inside the coiled form.
RP: Why did you choose tin foil?
DW: I had been working with plaster for about five years. The
whole issue about plaster is its beauty and languagehistorical,
beautiful, muffled. That was the context, and then I started look-
ing at tin foil. Tin foil has a deviousness to it, a falseness about
it, that I really liked. And its such an unlikely material to use to
make a monumental sculpture. I found it transfixing.
RP: It appears that you abruptly stopped using plaster.
DW: I did. It was a very bad thing to do career-wise. People get
to know you for one particular kind of language. And there can
be expectations of that language going on and getting more
sophisticated. But I found that the language I was using was
almost getting pre- empted by the material. So there was no
point in doing it. Changing to tin foil became almost painful. Id
think of plaster pieces, and it was quite painful not to do them.
It was really, really hard to make the tin-foil pieces work.
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Swan, 2007. Marble dust and resin, 137 x 71 x 84 cm.
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RP: And was there also an abrupt shift from the tin-foil to the
chalk and marble dust pieces?
DW: Definitely. This was shortly after the Irish Museum of Modern
Art bought Where do broken hearts go?. By this time with the tin
foil, I felt that I was making the same work, with the same strate-
gic elements in itand it could be decoded. For you, yourself,
there always has to be an element of investigation, an element
of discovery.
RP: Then we should not expect the resin and marble dust to continue?
DW: Absolutely not. Im already moving on. I think that Ive
begun to understand what the marble dust pieces are about for
me. And because of that, Im on the verge of soon going into
another process of new work, maybe in two years.
RP: So you dont like people coming to your studio to see you work.
DW: When I was making the previous works, thats right, I didnt
like studio visits at all. Very, very few people have seen the new
stuff thats in process. Its really awkward and embarrassing at
the moment. Its terrible, its just bad.
RP: What has kept you interested in the death objects?
DW: Its some kind of total integration at the moment. Its the
same thing as with the cacti; at that time, I was completed fas-
cinated with country and western. So, Ive been fascinated with
everything around the body of a dead horse. Before I made it, I
had really strong notions of what it would look like.
RP: How soon after their deaths did you cast the animals?
DW: With Swan (2007), it had just died. And then I positioned it.
I pose them.
RP: Does the choice of material memorialize them?
DW: I wouldnt say that. I started off using plaster, but that was-
nt satisfactory. I then chose chalk and then marble and resin. It
seems to make my idea for the work almost complete in that the
material has all of these references, immediatelyto classical
sculpture, to funereal furniture. The language that it speaks is
apt for a death mask.
RP: Were there any challenges in arranging the casting of a race-
horseor with the other animals?
DW: Probably one of the most difficult was the swan, because
theres an urban myth that all swans belong to the Queen of
England. But thats not true, its just the ones along parts of the
Thames. There are certainly a series of arrangements that need to
be made. People ask a lot of questions, which I think is very good.
People have been concerned about ethics and also the threat of
negative media coverage. This is, after all, how the U.K. and Ireland
are now. In the end, after people learn what Im doing and how Im
doing it, then I find people who will support the process because
the animals are treated with complete respect.
RP: What are your future plans?
DW: Im looking at taking the animal works further in a couple
of interesting ways. And Ive already found my next material.
But right now thats a secret.
Robert Preece is the publisher of Art Design Caf, <www.
artdesigncafe.com>, and a Contributing Editor for Sculpture.
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Left: Lamb, 2006. Marble dust and resin, 67 x 17 x 38 cm. Above: Fox, 2006.
Marble dust and resin, 142 x 40.5 x 23 cm.
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Lynn Aldrichs newest art-material treasure trove is Home Depot. There,
she follows in the footsteps of the seminal bricoleur artist, Marcel
Duchamp, scouting for manufactured objects that she subsequently
hand-fabricates into sculptures. Transforming the known into some-
thing curious, intriguing, and unexpected, her newest sculptures con-
vert drainage spouts into tree monsters reminiscent of German fairy
tales or model green and blue garden hoses into the illusion of cresting
ocean waves. In building sculptures from materials traditionally used in
and around the house, Aldrich also ironically folds her role as an artist
into womens historical affiliations with the home.
COLLECTING SPECIMENS
Lynn Aldrich
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Opposite: Hydra, 2009. Plastic downspouts
and elbows, leaf strainers, and gutter
screws, 94 x 55 x 55 in. Above: Biophilia,
2009. Sponges, scrubbers, scouring pads,
mop heads, brushes, plumbing parts, and
wood, 42 x 30 x 28 in.
A Conversation with
BY COLLETTE CHATTOPADHYAY
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Collette Chattopadhyay: Does your work start with the materials
that you find?
Lynn Aldrich: There is a drive to deal with material as indicative
of our cultural situation. You walk down the halls of Home Depot
and realize, This is the bounty of nature now, and youre over-
whelmed with choices. It becomes its own seduction, the way
nature used to be. I actually long for the natural world, and here
I am living in this very artificial city thats all about glam and
surface. Im not completely depressed about it, but I think of
myself as a botanist exploring the area, looking for specimens to
bring back to the studio and analyze and catalogue.
CC: Hydra, a drain pipe that has morphed into a tree-like form,
evokes ancient Greek mythology.
LA: The image of Hydra has an undercurrent of the disturbing
monster that cant be controlled. I think it was Hercules who
finally subdued the Hydra, but each time he cut off a head, two
more would sprout. Thats the kind of feeling that Im after. Of
course, the water hydrant comes from the Hydra. Typically I like
to begin work with a concept based on a grand notion or a rela-
tionship to the sublime that I feel is difficult to approach because
of where and when I live. Yet I have this longing for epiphanies
to celebrate, and so, I tend to tap into a suburban anxiety rather
than urban angst. L.A. has a soft fluffiness to it that cushions it
against real angst. But theres an anxiety or discomfort, a sense
that I thought Id have it all now, and I still dont. Its that old
story about the drive to go west within Western culture. So the
Hydra seemed like an interesting topic to address.
CC: The finials on Hydra appear to be fabricated from objects found
at a hardware store.
LA: I dont usually walk around in Home Depot looking for mate-
rials. I start out with ideas, then I see materials that seem appro-
priate. I edit out a lot of stuff that doesnt have the metaphors
Im after. I think its a combination of the early drive that formed
Modernism with the Romantic-Realistic, and I want both: the
realism associated with something having the ordinary indiffer-
ence of its beingof it being very frank and open and secure in
what it is. I dont tamper very much with whatever Im using. I
dont try to alter it.
CC: Youre playful with it, though.
LA: But I try to find out what it inherently does well itself, the job
it does.
CC: I find the modular unit used to build Hydra interesting because
it is one of those things thats used to turn a corner.
LA: Everything in Hydra is plastic material used for gutters and
spouts, mostly for residences. One part is a leaf catcher to keep
debris from going into the downspout, another is used to turn a
corner, another to catch a larger drain area. I just begin collecting
whatever related forms I can find, but they have their diversities.
Sculpture is particularly daunting because it has physicality to it,
and it has an engineering aspect as well. I wanted the method to
be true to the material. I stared at this stuff in the studio and put
it together with the screws, but wondered how to get it to form.
When I was ready to start making it. I put it together in the mid-
dle, screwing pieces to each other, then it just started to grow.
60 Sculpture 29.2
Parch, 2009. Plastic downspout, gutter extension, and flexi-spouts, 96 x
34 x 36 in. G
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Ive returned to the water image several times. Bouquet is also
made from downspouts. Im planning to submit another one to an
outdoor exhibition in Arizona. The curator contacted me and asked
if I would consider making some outdoor pieces. This one is made
of galvanized steel painted with an oil-based enamel.
CC: Where is this in Arizona?
LA: In Tucson. Its a desert area, with plants and pathways, con-
nected to Pima Community College. The show is around March
2010, and the piece is called Desert Springs.
CC: Do you modify your work as needed for the space?
LA: Desert Springs includes 38 components, and each one has
a pattern that can drill into the concrete path. The title, Desert
Springs, is like a suburban tract housing name. I went to Don
Edwards (a local paint shop) and asked them, What are your
five most popular colors for tract housing? Theyre all beige: Off
White, Navaho White, Desert Sun. When I started to do this, the
elements became like little creatures.
CC: A cross between the plant and animal kingdoms?
LA: Yes, and they flip the function of the downspout, like Hydra.
They become springs coming up out of the ground, which refer-
ences the abundance of a scarce resource. Many of my works ref-
erence the idea of being parched, including Parch, which is made
of plastic and flexi-spouts.
CC: Theyre water carriers, right?
LA: Yes, you hook them to the downspout.
CC: This is Southern California, so you can conduct the water to
wherever you want your plants to be, even where there is no
rainfall. Would these normally be buried in the ground?
LA: Well, they can be. But most people connect them from the
downspout to wherever they want the water to go. I thought that
Desert Springs, 200609. Steel downspouts, gutter extensions and corners, exterior enamel, 59 x 70 x 62 in.
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the dark brown and dark green were fore-
bodingsnake-like, as though the down-
spout were coming alive. Naming it Parch,
when there isnt any water to collect,
makes the material used to collect the
water aggressive.
CC: Many of your works animate the
inanimate, becoming aggressive and
even monstrous.
LA: In a way, making sculpture is an archaic
activity. Theres so much emphasis today
on ridding yourself of the physical, with
the computer and our general lack of
awareness of geography and place. I never
set out to have a recognizable style. It was
more about being interested, almost like
a biologist, in exploring and collecting
specimens. I think that there is also an
environmental statement. How is it that we live in a culture that offers so much suppos-
edly ready to satisfy and still there is a spiritual and physical longing for refreshment, for
revival? I feel like these mouths are reaching out from thirst or longing.
CC: The Lamp Shade pieces are actually based on a lamp shade?
LA: Yes, a shade made for one of those huge lamps in a hotel lobby. Theres a place here
in L.A. that makes large, oversized lamp shades. I think this is about as big as you can get.
I did about 12 of these pieces, and each one of them referenced a time of day or some
aspect of light, either in our sense of day and night or in the cosmos.
CC: They seem to speak about sensitivity to light in sculpture, an ephemeral emphasis.
LA: Classically, sculpture has been about form, and it was almost considered slipping
into the decorative if you were too concerned with surface, which could detract from
form. Im well aware of that because I dont want my work to appear decorative. But
Im simultaneously interested in surface. I wanted to get this form to do something
that was true to its character as a lamp shade.
CC: How did you make the form spherical?
LA: First, I had to make the shade itself strong. Its supported with wood, and I sculpted
the interior cove with a plasticized clay that doesnt shrink or crack. Then, I had to sand
and sand, and layer and layer. Finally, I got to the gesso. I could have it fabricated in fiber-
glass, but Im interested in having the quality of subtlety that comes from going over it.
CC: You extend the hand-fabricated methods of artistic creation, even though the form
emerges from the mechanically manufactured world.
LA: I have a rule for myself that Ill intervene in order to have some revelation occur, but
I want to do the least amount possible. Another work, which isnt finished, incorporates
images from the Spitzer telescope, at Cal Tech in Pasadena. The Spitzer does infrared
imagery of the outer cosmos, so they can see the past.
62 Sculpture 29.2
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Left: Quench, 2007. Steel downspout and elbows, straps, leaf strainer, plastic hoses, and oil, 95 x 17
x 24 in. Above: Rogue, 2007. Garden hoses, fiberglass, and steel, 60 x 55 x 32 in.
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CC: Youre placing these images from Cal
Tech within a shape that resembles a
Gothic stained-glass window.
LA: Yes, its made out of drywall. I felt that,
in the Middle Ages, the rose window was
a kind of telescope that gave a view of the
cosmos understandable in that time. The
Spitzer is our eye on the cosmos. I wanted
to put a collection of those images into a
window that notes the distance in light
years of each image world.
CC: You engage with ephemeral and other
challenging concepts for sculpture.
LA: In C.S. Lewiss The Great Divorce, a guy
on the bus that goes to heaven gets off
and starts walking around. It hurts his feet
to walk on the grass because its sharp,
which suggests that reality is hard. The
sense of wanting to make something that
is tough, in-your-face, flat-footed, and very
material but that might reference some-
thing past itselfthats called transcen-
dence. In our culture, thats a difficult con-
cept for any artist.
For the Cal Tech project, we met with
astrophysicists about five times. We werent
collaborating, we were there to learn. Cal
Tech gave us money to create the work.
We were inspired by the scientistsnot
that we were going to illustrate what they
were doing. Theyre such materialists.
Theyre wonderful, interesting people.
CC: So, they dont take it to the metaphysical level?
LA: Theyre not poets, although sometimes they like to think they are. In astrophysics,
there is a grand sense that youre the stargazer. Its not the priest as at Stonehenge, now
its us, the scientists.
CC: But in the artistic realm, were usually trying to define how the material work reaches
beyond the physical to the metaphysical.
LA: Astrophysicists are conjecturing that we might share a membrane with another uni-
verse or many universes. I was interested in the sense of awe, which the astrophysicists
also feel. I constructed a wormhole (which connects universes) that people could walk
through. It was made out of the cardboard construction tubes generally used to cast
concrete for large columns. I took these discarded forms and lined them with fur. Visitors
would start with a black hole and then move to cool purples and then through to the
light, exiting a white hole. They theorize thats what happens when you go through a
wormhole to another universe or pass to an existence in other dimensions, maybe a
universe with 11 dimensions. There may be more than that, but they have hints that
there are at least 11. I understand that I might be critiqued by those who say, But youre
so earthbound. At the same time that I want to point to transcendence, I also want to
remind the viewer of his or her physicality. Sculpture does that more than any other medium.
CC: For a sculptor to move from thinking about three dimensions to 11 is a challenge.
LA: Science and art both share curiosity and the desire to know and proceed. But the
scientist has a very restricted set of methods, and rightly so, whereas the artist or poet
can speculate and play with other kinds of realities.
My father was a veterinary pathologist, a biological scientist. I remember as a small
child, going to the research lab with him. For a while, he was the head of veterinary
medicine at the National Zoo in Washington, DC. I have a rhinoceros horn from a deceased
rhino that he had to autopsy. Im not so interested in the part of the natural sciences
that forms proofs and tries to figure out phenomena as I am in being an observer. Col-
lecting animal skin samples isnt that different from what I do in the studio, collecting
samples from hardware stores.
Collette Chattopadhyay is the co-author, with Peter Selz and Diane Ghirardo, of Fletcher
Benton: The Kinetic Years, published by Hudson Hills Press.
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Left: Miracle Aisle 21, 2006. Plastic downspout, plastic tubes, acrylic, and oil, 27 x 11 x 13 in. Right: Starting Over: Neo-Atlantis, 2008. Sponges, scrubbers,
scouring pads, mop heads, brushes, plumbing parts, and wood, 5 x 7.5 x 5.5 ft.
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hoktuwst 6Att rok Akt
seeking a wall sculpture to be displayed in the new Campus Center Building
at Central Oregon Community College in Bend, Oregon. Artists must reside
in the Northwest. |e o|m||cn oeco||ne | |c, ,, .o:o Visit the Web site
for all the details at <www.cocc.edu/publicart> or call 541/383-7564.
25tu AnnuAt 8osqu Akt 6tAsstc
(formerly Conservatory Art Classic) national judged and juried art show
and sale. On-line, CD, or slide entries accepted. Awards of $14,500 include
a first-time entrant award and the John Steven Jones Purchase Award.
Categories: Oil/Acrylic, Sculpture, Pastel, Water Media, Drawing. Open
to all artists 18 years or older. |n||, oeco||ne |one :., .o:o Show dates:
September 1126. $15 per entry on-line or $20 per entry (CD/slide).
Judge: Artist, John Coleman. Prospectus: self-addressed, stamped envelope
to Bosque Art Classic, Box 502, Clifton, TX 76634 or on-line at
<www.bosqueartscenter.org>; e-mail: art@bosqueartscenter.org; or
254/386-6049.
MAkkttAc
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Human/Nature
Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific
Film Archive
The artists in Human/Nature pro-
jected ecological concerns into art-
works by engaging with people
in diverse UNESCO World Heritage
sites, creating new work inspired
and informed not only by their
experiences in nature but also by
their interactions with local com-
munities. Rare, a visionary conserva-
tion agency in Virginia, which oper-
ates in more than 90 sites in some
40 countries, contacted Hugh
Davies, director of the Museum of
Contemporary Art, San Diego, to
help identify artists who could deal
with problems of conservation. In
Daviess words: Why not enlist
artists intelligence and creativity,
and their ability to bring attention
and focus to the plight of threatened
habitats and species? The museum
and Rare selected a number of criti-
cal sites. The Berkeley Art Museum
also came on board. During the
six-year gestation period, the two
museums decided on a roster of
artists who seemed best equipped
to work with diverse populations
in distant areas: Mark Dion, Marcos
Ramrez ERRE, Rigo 23, Dario Rob-
leto, and Diana Thater, as well as
MacArthur genius winners Ann
Hamilton, Iigo Manglano-Ovalle,
and Xu Bing. The artists chose their
sites, and after receiving their com-
missions and budgets, made multi-
ple trips to learn about the environ-
ments, meet with the people, pre-
pare their proposals, and eventually,
to produce the work.
Dion, who is well known for his
Honoe||cmme| assemblages
and who has previously worked in
Guyana and Borneo, traveled to
Komodo National Park in Indonesia,
where he hoped to explore the
famed coral reefs and to see the
frightening Komodo dragon. Once
there, however, he focused on the
difficult life of the parks rangers,
struck by their dedication, skill, and
diligence. Noticing their isolation
and lack of access to basic materials
such as books and flashlights, he
built a functional work of art con-
sisting of a supply cart that carries
books, flashlights, first aid mat-
erials, batteries, maps, and other
necessities.
Xu worked with children in Mount
Kenya National Park to produce
practical artworks. Known for works
that use Chinese characters for
English or meaningless words, this
time, he employed Chinese-inspired
characters relating to trees. Having
witnessed the deforestation of the
Mount Kenya ecosystem, he asked
the children to make drawings of
the missing trees; these drawings
were then sold to raise money for
new trees.
Throughout her career, Hamilton
has been more concerned with the
processes and structures that pro-
duce art than with the finished
product. In recent years, she has also
become interested in sound perfor-
mances. For this project, she went
to the Galpagos Islands, which are
not only an ecotourist destination
of renowned biodiversity, but also
the home of some 40,000 people.
Hamilton worked with eighth-grade
students who recorded animal
sounds and their own voices with
special audio- enhanced gloves as
they traveled around the island,
seeing their home for the first time
from the sea.
ERRE, who comes from Tijuana,
chose to work in China, along the
Tibetan border, in the Three Parallel
Rivers Yunnan Protected Areas. He
cooperated with local residents to
make a traditional-style building in
which he placed video-screen win-
dows that depict the old way of life
on one side of the structure and
the intrusion of globalization on the
other. In this rather didactic work,
ERRE bemoans the hasty change
from a spiritual culture to a
consumer society and the concurrent
destruction of ecological equilibrium.
Rigo 23 (Ricardo Gouveia) was born
in Portugals Madeira Island and
has been committed to political
workthe Mexican Indian Move-
ment, the Black Panthersfor
a good many years, keeping his
reviews
Dario Robleto, Some Longings Survive
Death, 2008. Glacially released woolly
mammoth tusks, human hair, woolly
mammoth hair, and mixed media, 57
x 53 x 8 in.
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distance from the art world. But
he welcomed the Human/Nature
project and went to the coastal vil-
lage of Canania in southern Brazils
Atlantic Forest South-East Reserve.
The surrounding forested areas
are inhabited by me||,c, mostly
descendants of African slaves.
Between 2006 and 2008, he made
five trips to form strong connec-
tions with area communities and
was able to enlist local craftsmen
and craftswomen, farmers, fisher-
men, and children to work with
him. They created two monumental
sculptures, using traditional mat-
erials and methods to make replicas
of contemporary weapons of mass
destructiona cluster bomb and
a nuclear submarineand turned
them into celebrations of life. The
30-foot-long clay submarine
becomes a Noahs Ark or perhaps a
Yellow Submarine, populated by
lots of little people and animals,
with an audio component to trans-
mit their songsa vessel of peace
and joy.
When former Secretary of State
Colin Powell misinformed the U.N.
Security Council about weapons of
mass destruction in Iraq, Manglano-
Ovalle produced a phantom truck
to transport make-believe deadly
weapons. For Human/Nature, he
went to the largest nature preserve
in Mexico, El Vizcano Biosphere
Reserve in Baja California, a spawn-
ing place for gray and blue whales,
harbor seals, and sea lions. With
the assistance of local individuals,
he produced a multi-sensory video
installation of the huge salt flats,
set against an infinite sky. In
|oe|nco| (2008), we see a white
expanse, like clouds seen from an
airplane, we hear the song of the
whales, and then, this is all inter-
rupted by the underbellies of the
large black trucks that mine the
salta powerful metaphor for the
violent destruction of nature.
Robletos contribution uses a mul-
tiplicity of mediums to investigate
history, both geological and human,
to find ways of rescuing nature and
mankind. In 2005, he took his first
trip to Waterton Glacier Inter-
national Peace Park on the border
between the U.S. and Canada,
where he worked with glaciologists,
geologists, and botanists to learn
about the effects of melting land-
locked glaciers. As an artist inclined
toward narration, he was also
inspired by the Romantic response
to the landscape by writers such as
Thoreau and Whitman. Robleto
designed and crafted wooden cabi-
nets for a number of displays. One
shows 50,000-year-old bear claws
juxtaposed with human hand
bones, another exhibits over 2,000
blown glass vials and a 19th-century
bloodletting glass. We can hear
recordings of extinct animals and
extinct languages. One display case
exhibits 19th- century braided hair
Above: Iigo Manglano-Ovalle, Juggernaut, 2008. Super 16-mm film digitized to HD video projection, 5:44 video loop.
Below: Mark Dion, Mobile Ranger LibraryKomodo National Park, 2008. Mixed media, 96 x 84.5 x 39.5 in.
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from lovers, intertwined with
glacially released woolly mammoth
hair and framed by 50,000-year-old
mammoth tusks. This deeply felt
discourse underscores the nature
of loss.
The artists who participated in
Human/Nature are engaged in the
critical problems now faced by
humanity. They do not believe in the
cynical postmodern deconstructivist
stance, which questions the place of
art in the late capitalist system. They
feel that the authentic artist has a
moral obligation to act when con-
fronted by environmental destruc-
tion. The glaciers are melting, species
of animals and plants are extinct.
But as scientists know, and as artists
can demonstrate with their visual
metaphors, life will continue.
|e|e| e|
A1tAW1A
Martijn van Wagtendonk
Museum of Contemporary Art of
Georgia
Martijn van Wagtendonks ||:||e
|n|c c |cue| t|cm|e| reaches back
to the past, evoking Marcel
Duchamps kinetic sculptures, and
stretches to an imagined future,
when the cleverest engineering in
the world will not hold back
natures floods. It moves the viewer
through a sequence of experiences,
emotions, and reflections, ranging
from the playful to the somber. One
enters a gallery space, dark save for
round light bulbs hanging from
long black cords. The bulbs reflect
onto a rectangle of dark water on
the floor, and a wooden staircase,
for the moment in shadow,
descends into the water. At the far
end of the pool, a wooden boat
is suspended in air, inviting further
inspection. Objects are affixed to
the boats underside, and as one
approaches, they begin to move
300 mechanical toy birds, pecking
and rocking in an exuberant out-
burst of sound while the lights in
the gallery come up, as if on a
stage. Then the birds fall still again,
and the other aspects of the piece
grow more pronounced: drips
of water falling from the ceiling,
recorded ticking sounds, and the
steel framework that almost fills
the room. This 20-foot-tall metal
structure mimics the skeleton of
a house and also serves to contain
the water on the ground. At the
center roofline is a round window-
like space showing projected
images of the moon.
van Wagtendonk is an artist
from the Netherlands who teaches
at the University of Georgia.
His debut U.S. installation is a work
with markedly Dutch roots, from
the rectangle on the floor that subtly
reminds one of Mondrian, to
the watery surface that recalls the
Netherlands many canals and
canal-house architecture. At the
same time, it also makes a connec-
tion to his current home in
the American South, with hanging
lights like fireflies hovering above
a dark expanse of swamp.
The strength of the work lies in its
ability to evoke a surprisingly wide
range of reaction. The mechanical
birds, upside down on the boat,
were inspired by a gift that van
Wagtendonk received as a child, and
indeed, the immediate impression
that one has of ||:||e is of having
stumbled into a delightful dream
from childhood. When the birds stop,
however, and the lights dim, the
water and the steel skeleton make a
sober impression. The house in the
center of the room is essentially
flooded, as houses might flood in the
Netherlands if manmade defenses
were to fail, and as they did flood in
New Orleans during Hurricane
Katrina. The dripping water creates
an eerie, solitary atmosphere, as if a
neighborhood had been abandoned.
Yet as soon as another person
approaches the boat, motion sensors
reactivate the birds, and the dark
vanishes again. The shifting of light,
sound, and image gives the installa-
tion an impressive movement, as
though Eadweard Muybridge had
transformed one of his stop-motion
sequences into a three-dimensional
experiment for the 21st century.
|co|c /||||||cn
8os1oW
Charles Jones
Boston Sculptors Gallery
A 12-foot-tall, butterscotch- colored
leather sculpture cleverly crosses an
elephant head and a gas mask. Straps
and buckles hanging from where the
neck should be suggest that the crea-
ture has been tamed by humanity,
and the cruel-looking steel bars
attaching it to the wall make clear
that it is not free to roam. The droop-
ing trunk ends in a trap-like metal
canister, preventing it from gathering
food. Charles Joness /::c|o 6|co
|,c|c refers to the Kyoto Accord, an
international agreement to reduce
greenhouse gas emissions. Even if
you dont know the meaning of the
title, though, the work offers plenty
to think about, starting with
mankinds uneasy relationship with
the rest of the natural world.
This was an idea- driven show,
with artists notebooks and models
of works to be executed on commis-
sion. Politics and history, Nikita
Khrushchev, Fidel Castro, and the
16th-century explorer Ferdinand
Magellan, all figured into the plan.
Americans are notoriously ignorant
of anything that happened yester-
Martijn van Wagtendonk, Trickle Into
a Lower Chamber, 2009. Mixed media,
installation view.
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day, never mind in the 16th century,
but Joness work, for the most part,
navigates that problem by standing
on its own. Even if you dont know
the references to the Cuban Missile
Crisis of the early 1960s, when con-
fronted by a small inner tube with
an antique radio floating inside and
a vintage, yellowed envelope nailed
to the wall, you get the idea of a
desperate attempt to escape and to
be informed. The envelope bears a
single line of text from Castro, writ-
ten on an old-fashioned typewriter:
History will absolve me. At the bot-
tom is a single spatter of dark red,
the color of dried blood. Cuba was
a persistent subject in this show.
to|c |\|| |c|m pairs a dark, faulty-
looking vintage outboard engine
and a cast lead crystal glass pro-
peller. While the translucent yellow
propeller reads as an isolated ray of
hope, it is also obviously too small
to power any kind of boat.
Joness materials are as interesting
as his themes. |||c|, u||| c|c|.e
me will be translated into an edi-
tion of three, each in cast lead crys-
tal and cast stainless steel. In pro-
posals for a series called The
Twelve Apostles, he translates the
subject into bats, hanging upside
down (as is their habit) in the posi-
tion in which St. Peter was said
to be crucified. Each one will be exe-
cuted in a different substance, rang-
ing from cast resin to titanium.
The only pieces that I didnt com-
prehend on their own were the two
about Magellan. The smaller con-
sists of a tiny throne-like metal
chair projecting from a stone cliff
(actually metal as well) mounted
on the wall. In his statement, Jones
says that he sees Magellans epic
voyage as an astounding feat by
a cut of men that we cannot truly
understandan accomplishment in
their era that may be likened to
the moon landing in ours. But I had
to read that to know.
t|||||ne em|n
Ntw osK
Don Porcaro
Kouros Gallery
A longtime New Yorker, Don Porcaro
has been active as a sculptor for
more than three decades. His style
is light-hearted and whimsical, but
not only thatbeyond the grace,
there is something else, something
not easily defined. One hesitates to
say that Porcaros work possesses a
darkness that underlines and even
defines the reach of his stone and
metal pieces, which are brightly
painted and seem entirely innocent.
Yet, for all their awkward, avuncular
charm, his sculptures emanate
an aura that is not entirely guilt-free;
it is as if they were about to reveal
a dark charm through the idiosyn-
crasy of their forms. When the
works are taken on an adult level,
the distortion of their shapes, with
loops and impossible curves, sug-
gests a hardly benign presence.
After study, on both a conscious and
subconscious level, the forms seem
disturbingly human, as if an alien
species had made its way into the
studio.
As a mature sculptor, Porcaro main-
tains total control over the shaping
of his art. The pieces are constructed
from metal or concrete and stone,
or aqua resin and stone, and then
painted. Humor is part of the view-
ing experience: his ungainly pres-
ences look like they have stepped
out of an animated film. Each piece
is a one-off, yet collectively they
have a family resemblance. The con-
versation engendered by this careful
installation adds something new
to Porcaros work, fashioning a dia-
logue across the similarities and dif-
ferences that viewers pick up
among the sculptures. Seen in col-
lective fashion, they perform their
existence much as individual musi-
cians contribute to a larger ensem-
ble. These relations between an
individual and communal reality
thus offer a more complex vision
than appears at first. In fact, the
rawness of the pieces is mannerist
Left: Charles Jones, Accord Group/
Kyoto, 2008. Hand-stitched saddle
leather, fabricated steel, and Lexan,
128 x 78 x 74.5 in. Below: Don
Porcaro, Avatar #55, 2008. Concrete,
metal, paint, 12 x 10 x 10 in.
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76 Sculpture 29.2
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in its effect. Porcaro sets up com-
parisons that remind us of a bluntly
allegorical satire.
Each piece is a small world of its
own. t|||o|cco |no /3 (2008) can
clearly be seen as a personage
of some sort. Its base is made of a
smooth round of slate-blue, painted
stone; stacked on top, cylindrical
elements rise into ever-narrower,
spiraling tubes, from which a simple
coil hangs. The individual compo-
nents are painted yellow, orange,
and purple as the sculpture
ascends. Porcaro rejects the notion
that his work is surreal, preferring
to recognize the inspired nonsense
of Dada as an influence. And we
remember that the title of the series
refers to the loss of innocence rather
than its survival. In t|||o|cco |no
/, (2008), the figure is much closer
to the ground. Its six tubular feet,
painted a sickly green, support a
purple concrete shape; on top of
the concrete, a red ball hangs from
a yellow metal tube. Porcaros
craftsmanship, in the shaping of the
stone and the fabrication of the
metal, is impeccable. The Avatar
series consists of small, waggish
works such as /.c|c| /,, (2008),
which looks like an unnamed
crawler taken from the deep sea.
Here, true to form, humor and
strangeness join up and bring forth
both monstrosity and child-like
delight.
|cnc||cn 6ccomcn
tt Wct WWA1t
Thomas Macaulay
Alice F. and Harris K. Weston
Art Gallery
The Weston Gallerys daunting
street-level space has seldom been
put to such good use as for Thomas
Macaulays |coe ||.|oeo Using
the most basic materials for an out-
wardly simple installation,
Macaulay built a house with card-
board boxes. The simplicity stops
there, however. The building mate-
rial for this ongoing series of site-
specific indoor installations consists
of standard commercial corrugated
containers, 18- and 36-inch cubes,
but Macaulay fashions them into
structures that interact with and
providefor the period of their
appearancea new definition for
their host spaces. |coe ||.|oeo is
the 10th in the series, which began
in late 2003.
Two walls of the street-level
gallery are glass, a third consists
of brick and stone, and the fourth
is given over to a passage into the
next room. One stairway goes up,
and another goes down. The ceiling
rises to 24 feet, except in the sec-
tion where it reaches 44 feet. This is
not a space for the timid artist to
confront. Because the gallery dou-
bles as an entrance area for
the adjoining performing arts center,
accommodation must be made for
through traffic, and Macaulay set
out to make the passage more inter-
esting. Visitors entering from Wal-
nut Street found themselves imme-
diately facing his structure, its cool
white cubes blocking their progress. A
reassuring directional sign indicated
that the front door to |coe ||.|oeo
was to the right. To the left, a single
column of boxes stood just outside
the construction. Its a tree,
Macaulay explained during a gallery
talk. Once visitors adjusted to the
idea of the house, the tree was no
leap at all.
The front door, an opening in
the outer wall of boxes, led to an
immediate left turn and a disorient-
ing sense of passages unknown.
Macaulay has said that he is inter-
ested in opening spaces and closing
them, a practice that keeps the visi-
tor off-kilter but alert. Unexpected
sight lines through openings in the
structure directed attention to the
Csar Pelli-designed surroundings,
including a masonry wall of brick
and stone and the repetitive rectan-
gles of the glass walls. The sights
and sounds beyond the windows also
influenced Macaulays work here.
Moving through, visitors came
to a division in the house. Brown
boxes, twice the size of the white
ones, formed a diagonal wall
through the structure, with a zigzag
halfway through. Macaulay may
have been suggesting that living
arrangements, if they are to work at
all, usually accommodate divisions.
Or he may have been referring to
the divided uses of the space itself.
Or he may have felt that this big
structure needed a definitive line
through it. The piece was so large
(approximately 20 x 30 x 40 feet)
that this strong gesture tightened
and enhanced the formal concept.
Despite the prosaic material, the
finished structure had a balanced,
almost classical sense to it. Playful
elementsamong them, the tree
and a freestanding arrangement
that mimicked an outdoor arbor
existed in harmony with deeper
notions. Houses, which took on a
symbolism beyond their function
in the recent economic rupture,
lend themselves to storytelling.
Macaulays work tells stories both
old and new.
|cne |o||e||
Bous1oW
The Art Guys
McClain Gallery
The Art Guys, Jack Massing and
Michael Galbreth, have worked
together since 1984, building their
reputation on a staunch commit-
ment to art and ideas over sales and
stability. Based in Houston, the duo
began their career in a modest loft
studio where they mounted alter-
native exhibitions of other artists
Thomas Macaulay, House Divided,
2009. Corrugated cardboard con-
tainers, 20 x 30 x 40 ft.
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and of their own work, which often
consisted of actions and perfor-
mances unwelcomed within the art
establishment.
For New Clichs, their first com-
mercial gallery exhibition in 12
years, the Art Guys created objects,
video sculpture, and conceptual
drawings. Gentle bursts of light
drew viewers into the gallerys
white-walled interior, illuminated by
reflections from a suspended mir-
rored chain saw. Plywood signs rested
on the floor to the left, and the
dividing wall facing the entrance
supported eight antique photos in
antique frames. Below, a small
ledge held a rusty spray pesticide
container with a video monitor. On
the far left wall, motorized wooden
letters spelled out, Fuck em if they
cant take a joke.
If someone stood right here and
looked at these works, you could eas-
ily convince them that this was a
group show, Galbreth said. That, for
me, is what on the surface is prob-
lematic about our work. Problematic
for commercial galleries, that is. The
Art Guys can take these risks because
they have a dedicated following of
collectors as well as a track record
of important public art commissions.
But now, they both have families,
homes, and a few gray hairs. They
are looking to increase their revenue
and cement their legacy.
These concerns, however ironically
handled, inform their most recent
and perhaps their last work, |c|e.e|
'co|, which the Art Guys call their
final gesture. They are selling their
future cremated remains for upwards
of one million dollars. In the show,
a pair of golden bronze busts of the
Art Guys sat inside a scarlet-painted
room. These traditional forms have
a morbid purposeto house the Art
Guys cremated remains. An over-
sized certificate hung on the wall
behind the busts, framed in ornate,
gold-painted, carved wood, explain-
ing the agreement between the Art
Guys and the buyer. When asked how
their families reacted to losing con-
trol over their loved ones remains,
the Art Guys replied, We asked our
families to accept it and to deal with
it. In one way, its selfish, in another,
they get to benefit from it while
were alive. Its reverse life insurance.
They are also selling their trade-
marked name, The Art Guys, for a
six-figure sum. They will continue to
work together under another name.
We start with the premise of the
artist as commodity, then, the body
as sculpture, and expand it into
social sculpture, Galbreth explains.
He admits that he cant stop think-
ing about this piece, more than any
other theyve made. And for the Art
Guys, thats worth a million bucks.
/|||cn |on|e|
StA11tt
West Edge Sculpture and
MadArt
Two sculpture exhibitions in urban
settings, West Edge Sculpture and
MadArt, demonstrated how
innovative private-sector art-in-public-
places programs have benefited
from the example (if not the fund-
ing) of Seattles longstanding per-
cent-for-art legislation. In turn, the
corporate model is now influencing
its public counterpart: the Mayors
Office of Arts and Cultural Affairs
has begun funding temporary
installations as well as permanent
works. The collective results offered
an improved visual arts environment
in two neighborhoods.
The fifth annual West Edge
Sculpture Exhibition, assembled by
Bryan Ohno, was the best yet. He
selected a jury of museum curators
and architects who, in turn, chose
Claude Andrew, Noah Grussgott,
Michael Johnson, Franceska
McCullough, Travis Pond, and Kinu
Watanabe. British-born Andrews
/|cne |n c t|cuo set a dozen or so
cameras (which resemble high-tech
binoculars) in an outdoor planter
adjacent to Benaroya Hall, the home
of the Seattle Symphony. Visually
unprepossessing, /|cne |n c t|cuo
offered a good example of how much
art today is more interesting to think
about than to look at.
Across the street, along the south-
ern perimeter of Robert Venturis
1993 Egyptoid faade for the Seattle
Art Museum, Johnson set three lam-
inated-plywood sculptures averag-
ing seven feet high. Resembling
chess pieces, 'co| |c.e, |e\| |c.e,
and |c| |c.e addressed the grid of
paving stones as if it were a chess-
Left: The Art Guys, Forever Yours,
200709. Bronze busts with engraved
brass plaques and framed digital
archive print, installation view. Below:
Kinu Watanabe, Dream, 2008. Cer-
amic, from West Edge Sculpture.
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78 Sculpture 29.2
board. With graduated heights, the
imposing works took on figurative
dimensions, especially |c| |c.e,
which Johnson set before Jonathan
Borofskys |cmme||n |cn |c
,.,,:o! (1993).
At the top of Harbor Steps, a public
staircase with fountains, viewers
encountered Grussgotts |ec., |coe
and |||mc|, |n|||o||cn. While the for-
mer, a cast concrete model of a chil-
drens playhouse, was a spinoff of
similar works by Rachel Whiteread,
the latter showed signs of greater
promise and considerable humor.
Having stacked three plastic Little
Tikes Play Cubes (another variant on
the playhouse), Grussgott sealed off
all of the openings and windows with
steel plate. |||mc|, |n|||o||cn seems
more a comic riposte to than an imi-
tation of Robert Morriss structures
of confinement (Grussgott is a former
Morris studio assistant).
McCulloughs delicately assembled
toothpick sculptures, 6cn,meoe
3c|nc:|e, suffered in the tall outer
lobby of Benaroya Hall. Based on the
orbital patterns of Jupiters moons,
their dependence on light and shad-
ow for greater presence seemed lost
in the busy setting. At the other end
of the outer ticketing area, Watanabe
held her own with one work that
had substantial presence and another
that was more subdued. ||ecm put
together five female half-bodies
(lower torsos and legs only) on a
raised circular platform.
Ohnos other undertaking,
MadArt, took place in the store-
fronts and storefront windows of
the upscale Madison Park area near
Lake Washington. Claude Andrew
was included again, with |e|e|oc|
|c||. Stephanie Ashby, Zack and Gala
Bent, Evan Blackwell, Tamara Codor,
Tim Cross, Cristin Ford, Julie
Freeman, Ben Hirschkoff, Cameron
Anne Mason, Jen T. Mills, Larry
Naylor, Stephen Rock and Nichole
DeMent, George Rodriguez, Kinu
Watanabe, Laura Ward, and Ellen
Ziegler also participated.
About half of the artists made
clearly sculptural interventions,
with the rest adorning, ornament-
ing, or making more two-dimen-
sional changes. Ashbys |cu |||:||cn
created an imaginary tree trunk
growing inside a store window.
Blackwell displayed two human tor-
sos flanking a huge flattened disk.
Rodriguez and Watanabe filled win-
dows with, respectively, ceramic
Mexican mariachi musicians and
Japanese peasants.
Hirschkoff straddled two- and
three-dimensional realms with
/::omo|o, hanging metal and plas-
tic cloud forms that echoed the fre-
quently gloomy Seattle weather.
Enhancing, if recessive, in their pres-
ence, both Hirschkoff windows typi-
fied the range of approaches to
such challengesstrategies that
insert sculptural elements into com-
mercial contexts that add far more
than a relief from product or service
displays.
|c|||eu |cnc
1osoW1o
Kai Chan
David Kaye Gallery
Kai Chans sculptures are his anti-
dote to our frenetic, attention-
deficited culture. In A Funny Thing
Happened on the Way to China, he
presented 11 compact and refined
universes that focus the viewers
attention on juxtapositions of tex-
ture and material. The delicacy and
quietness of the sculptures require
dedicated contemplation by
the viewer. Chan says, playfully, The
world is going too fast. I really
subscribe to the slow-cooking move-
ment. In response to the cold images
created by computer-designed art,
Chan, winner of Canadas presti-
gious Prix Saidye Bronfman (2002),
offers nature-referencing forms
as well as found and organic mate-
rials.
Chans work reflects his early
study of Chinese calligraphy and his
fondness for the poetry of e.e. cum-
mings. These influences are seen in
his asymmetrical design elements
and the play of negative and posi-
tive spaces against each other. He
is also interested in spatial relation-
ships between objects and materi-
als when he creates his sculptures
and fiber art installations.
|c||, ce||e| demonstrates
Chans ability to play with the ten-
sions of asymmetry. A lattice-work
of bamboo, wood, and wire is
counter-balanced with a pendulum
of manufactured aluminum. As in
many of Chans works, the shadows
cast by these elements are as
important as the physical piece. The
sculptures nature changes with
the ambient light, a mutability that
adds a further dimension to the
work.
The delicacy of Chans materials
can tend to a sugary sweetness, as
in /e||, which incorporates stainless
steel, pink silk thread, organza,
Plexiglas, and rice paper. In 6c|oen,
a more interesting pairing of con-
trasts and materials, the fragility,
lightness, and translucence of the
gampi paper ovoid are balanced by
the verticality and weight of the
aluminum pendulum. Looking at
the piece, one can speculate
about whether the ovoid is lifting the
weight skyward or if the weight
is pulling the ovoid to earth. c|| is
another simple but effective work in
which reflective stainless steel ele-
ments are juxtaposed with ethereal
and almost evanescent silk threads.
Kai Chan, Garden, 2008. Aluminum,
linen, silk, wood, cardboard, thread,
and gampi paper, 89 x 45 x 9 cm.
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The more complex c| demon-
strates Chans appreciation of tex-
ture and surfaces and his ability to
unite disparate materials. The form
is reminiscent of Chinese calligra-
phys angular flow. Here, Chan plays
with the visual, as opposed to the
actual, weight of his materials. The
verticals of the silk thread webbing
act as a counterpoise to the dan-
gling aluminum weight. The branchs
spotted and polished surface
echoes both the dappled colors of
the webbing and the metals sheen.
Thus, the branch bridges the two
opposing forms, and the commonal-
ities of their surfaces allow the
piece to blend as a composition.
Chans work is not muscular. It
does not elicit raw reactions. Instead,
he requires intellectual engagement,
asking viewers to ponder, in his
words, what the work is telling
them in a personal way and how it
relates to their own experiences.
| |,nn ||ce|
1oKAMAcMt tt 1J1suWAW
1owW, j AAW
Echigo-Tsumari Art Triennial
2009
At the Echigo-Tsumari Art Triennial,
visitors find works with a map, travel-
ing by car, bus, bicycle, or on foot to
engage in a treasure hunt through
the rural, mountain- encircled land-
scape. The triennial, which began
in 2000, was directed by Soichiro
Fukutake, the chairperson of Benesse
Corporation, and Fram Kitagawa,
curator of a number of exhibitions
and art events. Both of them have
struggled to revitalize provincial
areas by means of art, beginning
with the internationally famous
Naoshima Island. The Echigo-Tsumari
region, encompassing Tokamachi City
and Tsunan Town, lies in the south-
ernmost part of Niigata Prefecture,
north of Tokyo. Beautiful green
rice terraces spread out in summer,
though everything is covered with
snow in winter. The site encompasses
760 square kilometers, with more
than 350 works shown both indoors
and out.
The principal concept of the trien-
nial is to create contact with nature
and communities through art, to be
involved in the locality, rather than
simply to see/show artworks. Sight-
specific works are based on involve-
ment with the landscape, local cul-
ture, and climate. The triennial also
focuses on foreign countries: vari-
ous international institutions such
as Asialink of Australia and the
Hong Kong Arts Centre participated,
as well as artists from 38 countries.
The Echigo-Tsumari Art Triennial has
three componentsClosed School
Projects, Vacant House Projects, and
outdoor art. Under the first, closed
schools (10 so far) are reborn as art
spaces or facilities to create a hub
of cultural exchange. One classroom
hosted Ryoichi Yamazakis to||o|e
|cono ,no|cme (2009), small stat-
ues of children hooded in parkas.
Their expressions suggest people who
have shut themselves away from the
world of modern society.
In the Vacant House Projects,
artists re-imagine vacant houses in
collaboration with architects. The
most interesting one so far has been
|eoo|n |coe (from the 2006 trien-
nial) by Junichi Kurakake and the
Sculpture Course of Nihon University
College of Art. Carving, a basic sculp-
tural technique, is the subject of this
work. Using only chisels, they
gouged every part of a renovated
house, including floorings, walls,
columns, and braces. Thus an empty
shell is revitalized as an artwork,
shedding its old surface through
carving. This year, the group finished
a new work, t|coe||e |coe (2009),
in a neighboring area. These vacant
house projects are not only shown as
artworks, they serve the community
as restaurants and accommodations.
The outdoor art makes the most of
the traditional Japanese rural land-
scape. Some sculptures have already
become synonymous with the festival.
Soichiro Tanakas |e
cue|
cno ||e |eo ||ccn||, (2000) is remi-
niscent of the summer countryside;
|e ||:e ||e|o (2000), by Ilya & Emilia
Kabakov, combines poems about ter-
raced rice fields and statues of farm-
ers; Yayoi Kusamas omc|| |n 3|ccm
offers huge flowers decorated with
polka dots. Among the new pieces
this year are |e.e|e t||, (2009) by
Belgium-based Pascal Marthine
Tayou. The five-meter-high work
includes gigantic suspended pencils;
it is thrilling to look up at the sharp
points directly overhead. Korean
artist Jaehyo Lees o:.::::o-:o)oo:
(2009) consists of three large spheres
made from logs, the natural materi-
als suggesting a relationship with
the surrounding landscape.
At the triennial, we begin to see
everything as art, even an iron pole
along the road and a farmhouse stor-
age area. After the treasure hunt,
we think anew about the nature of
art. Here, it is possible for us to
be touched by art in a different way
than in a museum. At the Echigo-
Tsumari Art Triennial, art comes
much closer to us.
|cm||c c|c
Pascal Marthine Tayou, Reverse City, 2009. Wood and mixed media, approximately 5 meters high. From the Echigo-
Tsumari Art Triennial.
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80 Sculpture 29.2
including keynote addresses, technical
demonstrations, seminars, and three juried
exhibitions.
The Mid-South Sculpture Alliance (MSA)
is an ISC affiliate group serving sculptors in
Kentucky, Tennessee, Alabama, and Georgia.
For this conference, MSA collaborated with
members of another ISC affiliate group,
Chicago Sculpture International, to present
two juried exhibitions featuring work from
members of both organizations. Forty indoor
works were on display at the Gallery in Red
Bank, while 20 outdoor sculptures will be on
display at the Tennessee Riverpark for one
year. A third exhibition featured sculptures
from MSA student members and MSA Con-
ference Education Sponsor schools.
All three exhibitions were juried by keynote
speakers Carol Mickett and Robert Stackhouse,
sculptors and collaborators from St. Petersburg,
Florida. A second keynote address was deliv-
ered by Valerie Fletcher, Senior Curator of
Modern Art at the Smithsonian Institutions
Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden
in Washington, DC. Another featured presenta-
tion was a discussion about public art with
Jack Murrah, Senior Associate of the Lyndhurst
Foundation, and Ann Coulter, Principal of
Kennedy Coulter Rushing & Watson, LLC,
both of Chattanooga.
Like the International Sculpture Center, the
Mid-South Sculpture Alliance and Chicago
Sculpture International work to advance the
creation, awareness, and understanding of
sculpture and its important role in our com-
munities. Membership to all three groups is
open to anyone anywhere with an interest
in and commitment to the field of sculpture.
For more information about MSA, visit
<www.midsouthsculpture.org>. For more
information about CSI, visit <www.
chicagosculptors.com>. For more information
about ISC membership and events, visit
<www.sculpture.org>.
isc PEOPLE, PLACES, AND EVENTS
This past September, ISC Executive Director Johannah Hutchison and Membership
Coordinator Lauren Hallden-Abberton traveled to Chattanooga, Tennessee, to attend
the Mid-South Sculpture Alliances Sculpture Conference 2009. This exciting event,
which attracted 150 attendees from 14 states, featured a variety of programming,
Left: Stan Townsend (far right) of Townsend Atelier during his mold-making and patina demonstration.
Right: Installation of Ray Katzs Celestial Navigator at the Tennessee Riverpark; Michael Dillons Up
and Away on the right.
C
H
A
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L
E
S
M
A
H
A
N
Left: Opening reception at the Hunter Museum of American Art, overlooking the Tennessee River.
Right: Verina Baxter, MSA president and conference chair, welcomes the crowd to MSAs Sculpture
Conference 2009.
Left: Indoor Exhibition Award of Excellence winners Val Lyle, MSA member, and Ron Gard, CSI
member, are flanked by exhibition jurors Robert Stackhouse and Carol Mickett. Right: Conference
attendees tour John Henrys sculpture studio.
/c| .), |c . C .o:o :o||o|e (|| o33),.3\; | o||||eo mcn|||,, e\:e| |e||oc|, cno /oo|, |, ||e |n|e|nc||cnc| :o||o|e ten|e| |o||c||c| c|||:e :o,, tcnne:||:o| /.e |H, !|| ||cc|, Hc||n|cn, |t
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||e |c| onc||:||eo mc|e||c| ||ece eno cn /| u||| mc|e||c| |eo|||n |e|o|n 0|n|cn e\|eeo cno .c||o||, c| |n|c|mc||cn |e|e|n c|e ||e |ecn||||||, c| ||e co||c|, nc| ||e |t /o.e||||n |n :o||o|e
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||cnc| mc|||n c|||:e |c|mc|e| eno :|cne c| coo|e |c |n|e|nc||cnc| :o||o|e ten|e|, :) |c|||cono |o, o||e 3, |cm|||cn, || o3o:), |/ | neu|cno o|||||o||cn |, t|6, |n:, .,o H ,,||
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T HE MI D- S OUT H S CUL PT URE AL L I ANCE S S CUL PT URE CONF E RE NCE 2 0 0 9
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