Sul Pture 201401

sculpture
January/February 2014
Vol. 33 No. 1
A publication of the
International Sculpture Center
www.sculpture.org
Annette Lemieux
Shinique Smith
Tony Matelli
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THE WORLDS NEWSSTAND
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As we say goodbye to 2013 and move into another year, I want to thank everyonemembers, subscribers, conference and symposium
attendees, and of course the ISC stafffor their support. The last three years have seen us expand our programming, publish two
more books, and hold a symposium in New Zealand under the leadership and guidance of the Board of Trustees.
We will see some changes on the ISC Board this year as Marc LeBaron completes his term as Chair and hands over the reins to Ree
Kaneko. Along with a new Chair, the Board will have some new officers. Prescott Muir will be taking over as Treasurer from Robert
Edwards, and Doug Schatz will assume the responsibilities of Secretary. Please join me in thanking the past Chair and Officers of the
ISC Board and welcoming its new leaders. I am looking forward to working with them.
2014 promises to be an exciting year. In addition to expanding and strengthening the Board of Trustees, we will be focusing on our
mission and providing the services our members want and need. I am happy to announce that Judy Pfaff and Ursula von Rydingsvard
will be presented with the Lifetime Achievement Award at an amazing art party and gala celebration on April 30th in New York City.
Later in the year, we will be returning to New Orleans for the 25th International Sculpture Conference (October 14) to witness
first-hand how art has transformed neighborhoods and communities post-Katrina, and we are delighted to be partnering with the
Ogden Museum and the Contemporary Art Center. I hope that you will join us at these events, and others, as we plan a calendar
that offers learning and networking opportunities for everyone interested in sculpture.
Johannah Hutchison
ISC Executive Director
From the Executive Director
4 Sculpture 33.1
ISC Board of Trustees
Chair: Ree Kaneko, Omaha, NE
Treasurer: Prescott Muir, Salt Lake City, UT
Secretary: F. Douglass Schatz, Potsdam, NY
Chakaia Booker, New York, NY
Lucas Cowan, Baltimore, MD
Richard Dupont, New York, NY
Jeff Fleming, Des Moines, IA
Carla Hanzal, Charlotte, NC
Gertrud Kohler-Aeschlimann, Switzerland
Deedee Morrison, Birmingham, AL
George W. Neubert, Brownville, NE
Andrew Rogers, Australia
Frank Sippel, Switzerland
Boaz Vaadia, New York, NY
Philipp von Matt, Germany
Chairmen Emeriti: Robert Duncan, Lincoln, NE
John Henry, Chattanooga, TN
Peter Hobart, Italy
J. Seward Johnson, Hopewell, NJ
Josh Kanter, Salt Lake City, UT
Marc LeBaron, Lincoln, NE
Robert Vogele, Hinsdale, IL
Founder: Elden Tefft, Lawrence, KS
Lifetime Achievement in
Contemporary Sculpture Recipients
Magdalena Abakanowicz
Fletcher Benton
Fernando Botero
Louise Bourgeois
Anthony Caro
Elizabeth Catlett
John Chamberlain
Eduardo Chillida
Christo & Jeanne-Claude
Nancy Holt
Mark di Suvero
Richard Hunt
Phillip King
William King
Manuel Neri
Claes Oldenburg & Coosje van Bruggen
Nam June Paik
Beverly Pepper
Arnaldo Pomodoro
Gi Pomodoro
Robert Rauschenberg
George Rickey
George Segal
Kenneth Snelson
Frank Stella
William Tucker
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Departments
16 Itinerary
22 Commissions
80 ISC News
Reviews
71 New York: Gregg Louis
72 Los Angeles: Steven Claydon
73 San Francisco: Alan Rath
74 Boston: OccupyING the Present
75 New York: Kathleen Elliot
75 New York: Frieze New York 2013
76 Newport, Rhode Island: Maya Lin
77 Buenos Aires: Art and Sustainability IV:
Metaphors to Embrace the World
78 Le Franois, Martinique: Global Caribbean IV:
West Indies & Guiana
78 Venice: 55th Venice Biennale Collateral Events
On the Cover: Annette Lemieux, Girls Felt
Suit Pink, 2013. Wool felt, dye, and wood
hanger, 29 x 20 x 5 in. Photo: Courtesy the
artist.
Features
24 Beyond the Canvas: A Conversation with Annette Lemieux by Francine Koslow Miller
32 Anonymous Exchanges: A Conversation with Shinique Smith by Kathleen Whitney
38 Crossing Disciplines and Modalities: A Conversation with Margaret Wertheim by Sarah Tanguy
44 In Search of Universal Dialogue: A Conversation with Jackie Sleper by Edward Rubin
50 Ganesh Gohain: Realizing Metaphor, Memory, and Meaning by Minhazz Majumdar
54 Human Echo: A Conversation with Tony Matelli by Robert Preece
38
sculpture
January/February 2014
Vol. 33 No. 1
A publication of the
International Sculpture Center
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Sculpture January/February 2014 5
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S CUL PT URE MAGAZ I NE
Editor Glenn Harper
Managing Editor Twylene Moyer
Editorial Assistants Elena Goukassian, Amanda Hickok
Design Eileen Schramm visual communication
Advertising Sales Manager Brenden OHanlon
Contributing Editors Maria Carolina Baulo (Buenos
Aires), Roger Boyce (Christchurch), Susan Canning (New
York), Marty Carlock (Boston), Jan Garden Castro (New
York), Collette Chattopadhyay (Los Angeles), Ina Cole (Lon-
don), Ana Finel Honigman (Berlin), John K. Grande (Mon-
treal), Kay Itoi (Tokyo), Matthew Kangas (Seattle), Zoe
Kosmidou (Athens), Angela Levine (Tel Aviv), Brian
McAvera (Belfast), Robert C. Morgan (New York), Robert
Preece (Rotterdam), Brooke Kamin Rapaport (New
York), Ken Scarlett (Melbourne), Peter Selz (Berkeley),
Sarah Tanguy (Washington), Laura Tansini (Rome)
Each issue of Sculpture is indexed in The Art Index and
the Bibliography of the History of Art (BHA).
isc
Benefactors Circle ($100,000+)
Atlantic Foundation
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Grounds For Sculpture
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Gertrud & Heinz Kohler-Aeschlimann
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STRETCH
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I NT E RNAT I ONAL SCUL PT URE CE NT E R CONT E MPORARY SCUL PT URE CI RCL E
The International Sculpture Center is a 501(c)3 nonprofit organization
that provides programming and services supported by contributions, grants,
sponsorships, and memberships.
The ISC Board of Trustees gratefully acknow ledges the generosity of our
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contributed $350 and above.
I NT E RNAT I ONAL S CUL PT URE CE NT E R
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Mary & John Young
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About the ISC
The International Sculpture Center is a member-supported, nonprofit organization
founded in 1960 to champion the creation and understanding of sculpture and its
unique and vital contribution to society. The mission of the ISC is to expand public
understanding and appreciation of sculpture internationally, demonstrate the power
of sculpture to educate and effect social change, engage artists and arts profession-
als in a dialogue to advance the art form, and promote a supportive environment for
sculpture and sculptors. The ISC values: our constituentsSculptors, Institutions, and
Patrons; dialogueas the catalyst to innovation and understanding; education
as fundamental to personal, professional, and societal growth; and communityas
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Membership
ISC membership includes subscriptions to Sculpture and Insider; access to Inter-
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International Sculpture Conferences
The ISCs International Sculpture Conferences gather sculpture enthusiasts from all
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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
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www.sculpture.org
The ISCs award-winning Web site <www.sculpture.org> is the most comprehensive
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ISC programs include the Outstanding Sculpture Educator Award, the Outstanding
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16 Sculpture 33.1
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Al-Riwaq Exhibition Space
Doha, Qatar
Damien Hirst
Through January 22, 2014
Imitated, parodied, reviled, and
exalted, Hirst is the art world media
icon par excellence. In spite of the
bad-boy tactics and opportunistic
courting of hype, he explores serious
themesthe process of life and
death, the lies we tell and the desires
we indulge to mask our fears of the
inevitable. The celebrity, luxury
materials, and wealth associated with
his media image only underscore
the message of his preserved animal
corpses and medical/pharmaceutical
display cases containing not miracle
cures or everlasting youth but instru-
ments of pain and mortality. This
survey brings together key works from
the last 20 years, featuring a group
of seminal sculptures that demon-
strate a surprisingly practical philos-
ophy: Arts about invention, and we
are all desperately trying to invent
a better future and to learn from the
past. Hirsts major new commission,
The Miraculous Journey (outside
Dohas Sidra Medical and Research
Center), reverses his usual perspec-
tive on the life cycle. Fourteen mon-
umental bronzes follow human
gestation from conception to birth,
attempting to chart the mysteries
of existence.
Web site <www.qma.org.qa>
Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts
Omaha, Nebraska
Mel Ziegler
Through March 1, 2014
Ziegler, together with his late part-
ner Kate Ericson, helped to change
the face of public art, introducing
integrated practice and community
engagement as vital contemporary
forms. Using ordinary materials
books, lumber, house paint, jars,
and tap watertheir projects trans-
formed unnoticed aspects of public
life into tools of social commentary.
Ziegler continues to devise subtle
alterations to physical and mental
landscapes, employing idiosyncratic
wit to illuminate mainstream issues
and local concerns. American
Conversation brings together recent
works that explode cultural hierar-
chies and connect iconic corner-
stones of American mythology and
identitythe flag, guns, agricultural
landscapes, and rural life. From doc-
umentation of ephemeral events
staged in the Midwest after 2012s
historic drought to gun sculptures
and an inventory of American mon-
uments (both produced in collabo-
ration with his 12-year-old twins),
these interrelated works expose an
increasingly fragmented American
experience, characterized by deep
distress and stubborn optimism.
Web site <www.bemiscenter.org>
Bronx Museum of the Arts
Bronx, New York
Tony Feher
Through February 9, 2014
Fehers works challenge conventions
through apparent ordinariness. Min-
ing the worlds limitless supply
of consumer detritus, he selects his
humble components with care and
attention, turning the generic
and ubiquitous into the specific and
unique. In his eyes, everything has
potential; his job is to find the trick
in materials, that indescribable
something that allows me to exploit
an object for my own purposesa
little something that sets it off. This
survey of 60 sculptures reveals the
unusual optimism behind Fehers
project, which embraces fragility,
transience, and emotion. Instead of
social critique, he offers moments
of solace in which order and beauty
replace chaos and ugliness. Teasing
out character and inimitable formal
possibilities in what the rest of us
dismiss as valueless, these highly
personal works celebrate the power
of creativity and the ability to see
differently, beyond accepted norms
and definitions.
Web site
<www.bronxmuseum.org>
Corcoran Gallery of Art
Washington, DC
Mia Feuer
For the past several years, Feuer has
traveled to oil extraction sites around
the world to create work that
responds to the social and environ-
mental effects of extreme drilling,
fracking, and other hubristic gam-
bles in energy production. In 2011
and 2012, she gained restricted
access to an oil production plant in
the tar sands of Alberta, Canada,
where she encountered a nightmar-
ishly reshaped ecosystem. Her new
multi-part project, An Unkindness
(the title also refers to a gathering
of ravens), draws on this haunting
vision of nature consumed and
twisted by human greed. Inspired
itinerary
Above: Damien Hirst, The Miracu-
lous Journey. Top right: Mel Ziegler,
Lesson Learned. Right: Tony Feher,
Take It Up With Tut.
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by her experiences in Canada, the
Arctic Circle, and the Suez Canal,
Feuer explores the relationship
between human infrastructure and
the natural world in a series of
immersive installations at once topi-
cal and deeply personal, including
a modified dog sled and a synthetic
black (oil slick) skating rink open to
the public in the museums rotunda.
Web site <www.corcoran.org>
Fondation Beyeler
Basel
Thomas Schtte
Schttes installations, sculptures,
architectural models, paintings, and
drawings challenge the fundamental
premises of contemporary life. His
work presents a strange hybrid, join-
ing different modes of visual expres-
sion while creating contradictory and
illusory worlds, without ever losing
sight of the socio-political status quo.
Perhaps best known for his radically
simplified and exaggerated models
(Model for a Hotel topped Trafalgar
Squares Fourth Plinth in 2008), his
emotionally potent figural sculptures,
including the Frauen and the Zom-
bies, take a different tack, exploring
human isolation, vulnerability, and
hopelessness with bitter humor. This
show, which focuses on his familiar,
yet deformed and alien figures, fea-
tures indoor and outdoor sculptures,
as well as drawings and watercolors
that capture the ambivalence, ten-
sion, and conflict behind individual
and global fragility.
Web site
<www.fondationbeyeler.ch>
Hamburger Kunsthalle
Hamburg
Gego
Gego (who was born in Hamburg)
occupies a special place in the his-
tory of South American Construc-
tivist and kinetic art between the
1950s and 80s. Her constructions
abstract drawings, prints, and wire
sculptures rooted in strategies of
modularity, repetition, and disper-
salcreate a mutable geometry
that defies traditional definitions
of sculpture. Following a course of
linear fluctuations, these works
become increasingly more fragile,
ephemeral, and decentered. Line
as Object, the artists first exhibi-
tion in Germany, brings together
approximately 120 works that clar-
ify the recurring rhythms of Gegos
line, unifying her work across media
and time.
Web site
<www.hamburger-kunsthalle.de>
Hamburger Kunsthalle
Hamburg
Eva Hesse
Hesses legacy of Minimalist seriality
and nontraditional materials pushed
to achieve new modes of expression
continues to be a driving force for
many artists working today. Her
still-powerful sculptures evoke emo-
tion, absence, and contingency,
generating a visceral punch com-
pletely lacking in the more austere
domains of Minimalism. Celebrated
for these ground-breaking, mixed-
media works, Hesse (who, like Gego,
was born in Hamburg) was also an
accomplished and prolific drafts-
man. One More than One focuses
on rarely seen sculptures and draw-
ings from the latter part of her
short careerthe highly productive
phase from 1966 until her death in
1970revealing the dialogue
between drawing and sculpture that
defined her working process, as
drawn line migrates from the page
into three-dimensional space.
Web site
<www.hamburger-kunsthalle.de>
Top: Mia Feuer, photo of industrial
forms, Longyearbyen. Above: Thomas
Schtte, Me Memorial. Top right:
Gego, Reticulrea. Right: Eva Hesse,
Repetition Nineteen, III.
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Madison Square Park
New York
Giuseppe Penone
For Penone, the tree is the perfect
artwork, its form determined by,
synonymous with, and inseparable
from its forces of life and growth.
Since the late 60s, he has studied
the relationship between vital
energy (the tree) and obstacle
(stone)how the will embodied in
the tree adjusts to and overcomes
any impediment, going over, under,
around, and through whatever hin-
ders its progress. The three bronze
trees in Ideas of Stone take this
ordinary miracle and make it palpa-
bly manifest. The granite boulders
impossibly balanced high up in their
branches mark successive points of
adjustment, accentuating the prin-
ciples governing growth and form
and rendering them visible. The sin-
uous contrapposto of a trunk or the
fork in a limb can now be seen
as direct expressions of a struggle
between opposing entities (vertical-
ity and gravity), the sculpture record-
ing nothing less than the shaping
of a life. In these works, bronze once
again lives up to its ancient reputa-
tion as an animating force, fossilizing
a moment in an unfolding temporal
drama so that we can understand its
beauty.
Web site
<www.madisonsquarepark.org>
Massachusetts College of Art &
Design
Boston
Alison Saar
Sophisticated commentaries on
family, spirituality, and race, Saars
powerful found-object-encrusted fig-
ures allude to a rich variety of refer-
ences and subjects, infusing his tor-
ical stereotypes with contemporary
meanings. Artistic traditions from
the Americas to Africa and beyond
inform these paradoxical responses
to the black and white delineations
of political and social forces, holding
their contradictions in a powerful
visual tension. Material histories and
associations, everyday experience,
ritual, mythology, and the stark sculp-
tural simplicity of German Expres -
sionism coalesce in works of primal
intensity that critique accepted
behaviors and social injustices. In
addition to Saars familiar figures,
this show features four recent instal-
lations (made during a residency
at Pilchuck Glass School in Seattle)
that venture into new formal and
symbolic territory.
Web site <www.massart.edu>
MAXXI
Rome
Jan Fabre
Visual artist, playwright, and stage
director, Fabre explores the perme-
able border between reality and
dream, creating impressive fantasy
works reminiscent of Hieronymus
Bosch. His bizarre mix of animal
and human metamorphoses, use of
unusual and uncanny materials,
and eye for the theatrical tableau
reveal a world difficult to measure
by conventional artistic standards.
His installations range from the
stunningly gorgeous to the chill-
ingly disturbingeffects made all
the more visceral by a seamless
interlocking of borrowed and experi-
enced images. Stigmata focuses
on his actions and performances
from 1976 through 2013; more than
800 documents, drawings, models,
films, sculptures, and performance
relics span the range of his mythical
world, from medieval visions to
contemporary capitalist nightmares,
from quasi-religious fervor to post-
scientific skepticism.
Web site
<www.fondazionemaxxi.it>
Museo National Centro de Arte
Reina Sofia
Madrid
Roman Ondk
One of the most significant neo-
conceptualists to emerge in recent
years, Ondk creates recursive inter-
ventions that impact the real world
through contextual shifts and poetic
mises-en-scne. By constantly trans-
ferring (contradictory) meanings and
Left: Giuseppe Penone, Idee di pietra.
Bottom left: Alison Saar, Weight.
Right: Jan Fabre, Ilad of the Bic-Art,
The Bic-Art Room. Bottom right:
Roman Ondk, Loop.
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introducing unexpected actions and
elements in incongruous places, he
manages to disrupt ordinary per-
ceptual balance. At the 2009 Venice
Bien nale, for instance, he trans-
planted a copy of the Giardinis land-
scaping into the Czech and Slovak
pavilion. Domestic rites inflated into
public events, public rituals enacted
to no end, and slippages through
supposedly impenetrable bound-
ariesOndk employs all of these
strategies and more in his micro-
disturbances. Though almost invisi-
ble, his new site-specific work,
Scene, completely alters the experi-
ence of the Reina Sofias Palacio de
Cristal. A perfectly camouflaged, ele-
vated walkway surrounds the build-
ing, opening up unstable rifts in
the balance between viewer and
viewed, object and protagonist,
reality and delusion.
Web site
<www.museoreinasofia.es>
Museum of Contemporary Art
Chicago
The Way of the Shovel:
Art as Archaeology
Over the last two decades, contem-
porary art has embraced archaeology
as literal practice and metaphorical
tool of critique. By digging up
the relics of the pastwhether arti-
facts, repressed memories, or forgot-
ten historiesartists engaged
in archival research, documentation,
and museological display attempt
to correct what curator Dieter Roel-
straete calls our cultural pathology
of forgetting. The Way of the
Shovel re-imagines the art world
as an alternative History Channel
dedicated to challenging received
historical narratives and uncovering
alternative perspectives. Featured
documentarians include Phil Collins,
Moyra Davey, Tacita Dean, Mark
Dion, Stan Douglas, Deimantas
Narkevicius, Anri Sala, Hito Steyerl,
and Ana Torfs, while Mariana Castillo
Deball, Cyprien Gaillard, Daniel
Knorr, Jean-Luc Moulne, Michael
Rakowitz, and Simon Starling ques-
tion the often politicized relationship
between objects and truth. Two
exhibitions within the exhibition
focus on Robert Smithson as the
ur-model for artist as researcher and
explore psychoanalysis as an archae-
ology of the mind.
Web site <www.mcachicago.org>
Museum of Contemporary Art
North Miami
Tracey Emin
Now a fixture of the contemporary
art establishment, Emin achieved
tabloid notoriety in the early 90s for
intensely confessional works that
tapped into the mainstream of tell-all
public consciousness. Her installa-
tions, sculptures, embroidered blan-
kets, neon pieces, and works on
paper disclosed private autobio-
graphical details with provocative
abandon. A Louise Bourgeois for the
postmodern set, Emin pioneered
a new direction in feminist themes,
exploring the barely charted terri-
tory of rape, promiscuity, and abor-
tion. Even as her subjects have
mellowed, she maintains the same
cathartic, yet analytical and unsen-
timental approach to personal reve-
lation. This exhibition, which focuses
on her neon works, explores how
the medium has played an essential
role in her development, marking
a shift from the early diaristic style
to a more cryptic and open- ended
form of expression.
Web site <www.mocanomi.org>
Museum of Modern Art
New York
Isa Genzken
Genzkens assemblages create sug-
gestive fusions of Modernist aspi-
ration and blatant materialism.
Beginning with the aerodynamic,
incised wood sculptures of the
Above: Daniel Knorr, The State of
Mind, from The Way of the Shovel.
Top right: Tracey Emin, Angel without
You. Right: Isa Genzken, Disco Soon
(Ground Zero).
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20 Sculpture 33.1
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1970s through her recent delicate
installations, she has created a body
of work symbolizing the tightrope
act that we all perform, balancing
between beauty and destruction,
grace and brutality. With social,
political, and economic conditions
constantly in mind, she reveals the
bewildering and contradictory sides
of human knowledge and percep-
tion by questioning things that we
take for granted. Her scrutiny
extends to the parameters of sculp-
ture itself, as she probes the mean-
ing of the three-dimensional object
while adding an emotional charge.
This retrospective gathers a selection
of nearly 150 worksfrom small
diorama-like sculptures to room-
filling installationsall issuing a
challenge to the traditional language
of found objects and claiming an
unusual position in contemporary
art.
Web site <www.moma.org>
MoMA PS1
Queens, New York
Mike Kelley
Once the enfant terrible of L.A.,
Kelley became one of the most influ-
ential artists of recent decades,
a contemporary Virgil guiding us
through the realms of pop culture,
Modernist tradition, and the
uncanny. This retrospective brings
together almost 200 works, dating
from the 1970s to his untimely
death last year, filling the entire PS1
building with every conceivable
mode of artistic expression. Sculp-
ture, drawing, performance, music,
video, photography, and painting
Kelley used all means necessary to
explore the conditions of his moment
in time, as well as his place in it.
His prolific output barely manages
to contain all the repressed memo-
ries, adolescent angst, and political
anger crammed into its confines,
spaces further crowded by the spec -
ters of institutional power and per-
sonal hindsight. Yet through the
lurking fears and disjunctions, the
relentless self- examination and cri-
tique, and the fault lines between
sacred and profane, there is a
glimpse of something transcendent,
a remaking of a flawed world
through humor, courage, and cre-
ativity.
Web site <http://momaps1.org>
Nasher Sculpture Center
Dallas
Nasher XChange
The Nasher Sculpture Center is cele-
brating its 10th anniversary with
a citywide public art exhibition that
features 10 new commissions by 10
international artists. As much about
the city of Dallas as it is about
public art, Nasher XChange worked
with the artists to identify a variety
of geographical, social, historical,
and environmental sites. Lara Almar -
cegui, Rachel Harrison, Alfredo Jaar,
Charles Long, Liz Larner, Rick Lowe,
Vicki Meek, Ruben Ochoa, Ugo
Rondinone, and Good/Bad Art Col-
lective represent a wide range of
practices in contemporary sculpture
and radically different approaches
to public art. From Lowes
Trans.lation, which has forged a col-
laboration between an eclectic team
of community organizers, designers,
artists, and the residents of Vickery
Meadow, to Rondinones vibrantly
colored, wooden pier on the shore
of Fish Trap Lake, which creates
a meditative place of immersion on
the site of a 19th- century utopian
community, these projects offer
a snapshot of public art today and a
vision of new possibilities for the
future.
Web site
<www.nashersculpturecenter.org>
Philadelphia Museum of Art
Philadelphia
Barbara Chase-Riboud
Through January 20, 2014
Chase-Riboud conceived the first of
her Malcolm X works in early
1969, drawing on her experiences
in France, North Africa, and China.
Combining cast bronze with wrapped
skeins of silk and wool, these over
life-size sculptures allude to the
presence of a figurea totemic war-
rior of contradictory complexity.
Left: Barbara Chase-Riboud, Malcolm
X #3. Above: Mike Kelley, Deodorized
Central Mass with Satellites. Above
right: Lara Almarcegui, Buried House
(in progress), from Nasher XChange.
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The balances struck between
dualismsvertical and horizontal,
mineral and organic, male and
female, rigid armor and supple
draperytake on new resonance in
the context of the American Civil
Rights Movement, offering a power-
ful model of integration and har-
monization. This show features five
stele from the series, as well as
related sculptures and a group of
exquisite charcoal drawings that
reveal an equally sensitive union of
diverse references, textures, and
forms.
Web site
<www.philamuseum.org>
Yale Center for British Art
New Haven, Connecticut
Nicola Hicks
Since the 80s, Hicks has ignored
art world trends to pursue a con-
temporary form of figurative, pre-
dominately animal sculpture. Her
vital, empathic creatures capture
something of the physical and psy-
chological power of living beings.
Sometimes realistic specimens,
sometimes imaginary impossibilities,
they reanimate a once moribund
tradition. Rapidly executed in straw
and plaster, and often life-size, her
bears, donkeys, lions, and metamor-
phosed humans retain an essential
spark of energy and spontaneity,
even when painstakingly cast in
bronze. This exhibition features
seven recent sculptures by Hicks
installed along with a group of
18th- and early 19th-century paint-
ings from Yales collection. Her
selectionsfrom Stubbs and Land-
seer to Agasse and Chalonunder-
score her drive to find an emotional
expression that acknowledges and
respects a shared life force.
Web site
<http://britishart.yale.edu>
Nicola Hicks, Foal.
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______________________________
AMv IkAncscutnt Anu IutukrAkMks
Flatbread Society
Oslo, Norway
Oslos waterfront neighborhood of Bjrvika has seen some major changes in recent
years. As in the case of other major urban ports (Washington, DC, comes to mind), free-
ways built in the 1960s and 70s all but cut off the neighborhood from the rest of the
city. An isolated shipping and industrial center for years, Bjrvika is now being reinte-
grated and redefined as Oslos new cultural center. The scope of this redevelopment
project includes moving the obtrusive E18 highway to an underground tunnel and con-
structing a new opera house, central rail-
way station, central public library, Munch
museum, and numerous commercial and
residential buildings.
The areas changing landscape recently
attracted the attention of Situations, a
British public art commissioning organiza-
tion, which has organized a series of inter-
ventions, events, and publications created
specifically for the morphing waterfront.
For the first project in the program, Slow
Space Bjrvika invited San Franciscos
Amy Franceschini and Futurefarmers to
create a participatory work in the middle
of the construction.
Inspired by the redevelopment goal of
creating a city within a city and by the
name Slow Space, Franceschini developed
a plan to combine ideas of the commons
and of slowness. On her research trips
around Norway, she visited many rural
villages, where she was introduced to
bakehouses: These were usually small
brick buildings housing a bread oven
shared by the villagelively places that
linked peopleand were often the focal
point for sharing surplus food, gossiping,
and keeping in touch with the local situa-
tion. As Franceschini conceived it, her
bakehouse would be used to bake flatbread,
a staple shared by native Norwegians as
well as the countrys Iranian, Iraqi, Soma-
li, Pakistani, and Afghan immigrants. Flat-
bread Society would feature a variety of
different ovens, in addition to a miniature
field for heritage grains to be used in the
bread (some dating back to the 16th cen-
tury) and seating (heated by the ovens) for
visitors to gather and discuss everything
from makeshift production to food security
and astronomy.
During the months of May and June
2013, Franceschini and her team of artists,
farmers, oven builders, astronomers,
soil scientists, and bakers descended on the
non-site of Bjrvika to create a tempo-
rary bakehouse, a sort of oasis within this
22 Sculpture 33.1
commissions commissions
Amy Franceschini and Futurefarmers, Flatbread
Society, 2013. Wood, clay, straw, and grains, 2
views of multi-part, participatory project.
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no-mans land of construction. During the two-
month period, the Flatbread Society team conducted
research and experimented with the idea of the bake-
house, which will ultimately find a permanent home
in the same spot in 2016in the heart of a completed
residential community. The 2013 experiment, which
Franceschini calls Exploratour, hosted numerous
workshops in bread making, oven building, soil sci-
ence, agrarianism, and alternative economies. It
also included film screenings, a radio station for field
recordings, a mobile oven that traveled along the
waterfront on a canoe, and a rolling pin that doubled
as a telescope.
Flatbread Society welcomed visitors of all kinds,
forming partnerships with local students, beekeepers,
fishermen, architects, urban planners, and anti-GMO
activists. Ceramics professors suggested that their
students build future bakehouses out of local clay, an
area bank offered to brainstorm an alternative currency
for the bakehouse, and a seaweed harvester donated
some of her product to season the bread. A truly all-
inclusive community project, Flatbread Society
embodies Situations mission of creating alternative
approaches to public time as well as public space.
Though the Exploratour has ended, contributors
will continue to engage with Oslo residents through
small gatherings and events until the opening of the
permanent Bakehouse Bjrvika in 2016. In the best-
case scenario, we hope there will be a feeling that
we are growing a bakehouse, says Franceschini. The
next seeding is scheduled for June 2014.
Stvn Stot
Carbon
Canberra, Australia
Canberras NewAction Nishi building boasts that it is Australias most radi-
cally sustainable mixed-use building and apartment complex, complete
with a solar thermal hot water system, natural cross-ventilation, and rain-
water collection. The recently completed Nishi is home to luxury apart-
ments, condos, a hotel, an independent movie theater, and, until last year,
Australias Department of Climate Change. To emphasize the buildings
green identity and aesthetic, the developer, Molonglo Group, also commis-
sioned several environmentally conscious artworks for the premises.
Steven Siegels Carbon, the most public of these projects, oozes from a soffit
above the Nishis main entrance and then creeps sinuously across the faade
like tentacles or the roots of a tree. Made from shredded rubber tires, Carbon is
a modular work that Siegel prefabricated at his upstate New York studio before
shipping to Canberra and assembling on site. Siegel says that the meaning
of the work is straightforward: rubber is a carbon-based material, derived from
petroleum; and we all know how the oil industry has affected the planet. With
his longstanding interest in geology, Siegel brings a unique perspective to the
mining of hydrocarbon fuels, as well as a compelling aesthetic vision.
The same month that Carbon was installed, the Nishis primary tenant
was slowly falling apart. In March 2013, in an attempt to cut costs, Aus-
tralias Department of Climate Change merged with the Industry Department,
which threatened to downsize Climate Change and slash the number
of employees by almost half. In September, the new Prime Minister, Tony
Abbott, dissolved the Department of Climate Change altogether, although
it was later absorbed into the Department of the Environment. In October, the
Canberra Times reported that the Australian government was rethinking its
commitment to its $158 million [15-year] lease at Canberras landmark Nishi
building. Regardless of who occupies the Nishi, Siegels winding tire treads
will remain as a reminder of the complex and increasingly politicized rela-
tionship between humans and the environment.
Elena Goukassian
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Steven Siegel, Carbon, 2013. Shredded tires, 2 views of project.
Juries are convened each month to select works for Commissions. Information on recently completed commissions, along with high-resolution
digital images (300 dpi at 4 x 5 in. minimum), should be sent to: Commissions, Sculpture, 1633 Connecticut Avenue NW, 4th Floor, Washington,
DC 20009. E-mail <elena@sculpture.org>.
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____________
BY FRANCINE KOSLOW MILLER
A Conversation with
Annette Lemieux
Beyond
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Back to the Garden (detail),
2011. Britains cast metal farm
animals, figures, and acces-
sories, wood, paint, and
ground foam on mission table,
35.75 x 46 in. J
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Francine Koslow Miller: Its a marvelous
coincidence to see you in your studio seated
beside one of my favorite objects. Torso
After Trockel (1991), a two-necked, headless
mannequin form, references Rosemarie
Trockels Schizo Pullover (1988), a two-
necked sweater. Like many of your works,
this mannequin corresponds to your meas-
urements, and you hired a specialist to
create it. Does this raise an expectation of
autobiography in your work?
Annette Lemieux: Definitely. I also had a
pedestal built for Torso so that the com-
plete sculpture would reach a height
of 58.75 inches, which is where the top of
my neck ends. In a way, nothing is arbi-
trary, because it is based on my personal
measuring systems.
FKM: Your height, width, and the length of
your outstretched arms informed the size of
Moveable Obstacle #1 (1995), a faux brick
wall on caster wheels. Instead of using real
bricks, you glued roofing tiles to a wood
base. Can this and other related works
be read as emblems of blocked creativity?
AL: I see the act of making as pushing brick
walls. Moveable Obstacle #1 is me standing,
being my worst obstacle. But the wheels
indicate that I am also hopeful. The box
above the wheels follows my dimensions,
standing with my arms out like the Vitru-
vian Man (64 by 64 inches). Its width is 9.5
inches, the same as mine. I used roofing
tiles to echo the Dryvit that covered the
exterior of our home when I was growing
up. The product is no longer on the market
because it contains asbestos, so I bought
the roofing tiles, cut them into brick shapes,
and then glued them to a six-sided box
structure.
FKM: Youve said that David Salle taught
you that there is no hierarchy of objects.
He also gave you your first big break in
New York in 1983 by selecting your femi-
nist and language-driven painting Manna
(1983) for inclusion in a show at Artists
Space. By then, you were closely associated
with him, Barbara Kruger, Sherrie Levine,
Robert Longo, and Cindy Shermankey
members of the so-called Pictures Genera-
tion. What was that like for you?
26 Sculpture 33.1
Torso After Trockel, 1991. Seamstress brassiere
form and wood pedestal, 58.75 x 18 x 13.75 in.
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Annette Lemieux, who was raised in Torrington, Connecticut, grew up in
an atmosphere of Yankee pragmatism. Though she was expected to go
to secretarial school after graduating from Catholic grammar school and
public high school, she elected instead to pursue a degree in the arts.
After receiving her BFA from Hartford Art School (under the tutelage of
Jack Goldstein and David Salle), she moved to Manhattan in 1981. Working
as Salles studio assistant, she soon became associated with the Pictures
Generation, that celebrated group of artists who favored mediated
image over pure painting. Since 1989, Lemieux has lived in Boston with
husband Erik Hansen and their dog. She is a senior lecturer in Visual and
Environmental Studies at Harvard University and received an honorary
doctorate from Montserrat College of Art in 2009.
The precise geometry and clean design of Lemieuxs work might make
one think of her as a Minimalist with a message. She is a driven and
maverick creator of sometimes ironic and often downright funny images
that engage in the struggles of making art and the politics of living in
todays world. Using a variety of media, including oil on canvas, silks -
creen, collage, photography, sculpture, performance, and installation,
she brings a blend of existential yearning, absurdist comedy, and cultural
critique to her work.
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AL: They were a generation before us and were associated with
appropriation. There was a zeitgeist in New York in the early 80s
when we new kids, including Ashley Bickerton, Peter Halley, Gretchen
Bender, Jeff Koons, Peter Nagy, and Jennifer Bolande, were making
similar work. We were all reacting to Neo-Expressionism and were
influenced by a second generation of conceptual artists.
FKM: You began your career with large geometric paintings. How
and when did you begin to add idea-driven sculptural elements to
your work? I believe that it was a combination of practical neces-
sity and aesthetic choice.
AL: In October 1983, I was hit by a Ford van on the corner of 5th
Avenue and 22nd Street while running an errand for Salle. I spent
a month in the hospital and had a long recovery time. I returned
to my studio with a cane. Because I could no longer draw or make
large paintings, I started using found objects in my work. I had
already begun to realize that the painted rectangle had its limits.
My first painted work to break out of the rectangle was National
(1983), which consists of a large vertical canvas with a smaller
canvas hung to its upper left side. On the right side of the large
canvas, I placed a found sculpturea plaster head on a low pedes -
tal. I found both elements on the street.
FKM: You use a variety of found objects that you pick up at Army
Navy surplus stores, antique shops, yard sales, thrift stores, and
in the street. In Its a Wonderful Life (1986), a vintage globe (on
which you added the title in press type) is placed on a wooden
plant stand and positioned in front of a large canvas painted with
circles. What led you to extend your work beyond the canvas?
AL: Found and assisted ready-made objects have the ability to
lead viewers into the space of the work and offer a familiar way
to start a dialogue with it. When I painted, it was geometric.
When I wanted to allude to a place or a person, it was photographic.
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Left: Moveable Obstacle #1, 1995. Wood, glue, roofing tiles, acrylic paint,
pumice gel, and caster wheels, 69.25 x 64.25 x 9.5 in. Above: Its a Wonderful
Life, 1986. Oil on canvas, press type on globe, and wooden plant stand, 90
x 102 x 36 in. Below: The Seat of the Intellect, 1984. Oil paint on helmet, 11
x 9.5 x 6.5 in.
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If I was talking about an object, I began to think, Why not include the object instead of
an image of the object?
FKM: Your use of everyday subject matter and the way that you add fragments from the
domestic world reminds me of Robert Rauschenbergs combines.
AL: I like being compared to himnot only because of the found objects added to my
paintings and large prints, but also because of a shared interest in responding to Ameri-
can politics and culture.
FKM: The Seat of the Intellect (1984), an assisted readymade, consists of a vintage World
War II helmet on which you painted the score of a German waltz. Writing a waltz and
launching a war seem to be anachronistic. Tell me about the origins of this work and some of
the others that include military helmets. I know that your father spent 22 years as a Marine.
AL: All things in the worldpolitical or
personalare reflected in my work as
they affect me consciously and as I imag-
ine them subconsciously. War is always
around us, whether organized war, coun-
try against country, or violence in the
street. For me, the helmet protects the
head, protects the thinking process. I used
oil paint to write the score on a helmet
that I purchased at an Army Navy store on
Canal Street. Any relationship to my father
was more subliminal than intentional. The
Seat of the Intellect was one of my first
real sculptural objects.
FKM: Hell on Wheels (1991) and Search
(1994) are installations of multiple hel-
mets to which you attached rubber tires.
The suggested presence of soldiers makes a
forceful statement. Hell on Wheels includes
100 G.I. helmets arranged in a cluster.
Search, a platoon of G.I. helmets on wheels
fitted with battery-operated headlamps, is
all about surveillance, which is exceedingly
relevant today.
AL: Hell on Wheels was my response to
the Gulf War. I made Search for a show in
Italy; it had 18 helmets on wheels, each
fitted with a battery pack and switch to
turn on the light. They were positioned to
search for something. I called a company
that makes headlamps for night camping
and had them designed in black especially
for this installation.
FKM: Not all of your work is quite so seri-
ous. One of my favorite found objects is
Daisy (2008), a large brown- and white-
spotted fiberglass cow bearing a yellow
ribbon on her sash that reads Best in
Show. This clever joke about the art market
was shown at the Armory Show.
AL: It was part of an installation at the Paul
Kasmin Gallery booth called Come Join
In. The idea was to slow people down at
the art fair, which can be a buying frenzy,
and I wanted to create an atmosphere of
a county fair. Daisy was placed on a table
covered with a yellow gingham tablecloth
and placemats. I served apple pie and milk.
FKM: How and when did you begin to have
work built by others to your specifications?
AL: Many of the sculptures before 1995
include found objects that I manipulated,
except for the bronze works like Formal
Wear (1987), which were fabricated by a
28 Sculpture 33.1
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Above: Hell on Wheels, 1991. Steel helmets, steel rods, rubber tires, and brass collars, 100 parts, dimen-
sions variable. Below: Search, 1994. Steel helmets, steel rods, rubber tires, brass collars, and battery-
operated headlamps, 18 parts, 288 x 140 in.
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foundry. Formal Wear started out as a fedora
that fit my husbands head; it came with
an insert and a hat box. I had all of the
parts cast in bronze with a dark patina so
that they resembled artifacts from Pom-
peii that I saw in 1987. The hat became a
civilian helmet. After 1995, if I could not
technically create something, I began to
hire people who could. The work has got
to be real. I dont think a work has sepa-
rate status depending on whether one
makes something or has it fabricated. The
finished works, no matter how they are
made, are my vision.
FKM: Sleep Interrupted (1991), a black and
white ink portrait of you posed on your side
in bed, is based on Philip Gustons painting
Sleeping (1977). An actual light bulb with a
long, exposed cord hangs from a hook in
the ceiling so that it lights up the area
above your head. What is this about?
AL: Erik, my husband, took the photograph,
carefully arranging the folds in the sheets
so that they conformed to Gustons work.
The light bulb could indicate ideas or
stress interrupting my sleep. It is a formal
and thematic interruption of the picture
plane.
FKM: A light bulb and cord appear in
another Guston canvas called Painting,
Smoking, and Eating (1972) in which the
wide- eyed protagonist is trapped in anx-
ious sleeplessness. You referenced that
painting in a recent photo-based self-por-
trait called Bad Habits (2012). This time,
you appear wide awake, staring at the
ceiling and puffing on a cigarette. Youre
lying next to a plate piled with French
fries, your body covered up to the neck
with a comforter.
AL: Photographer Shelburne Thurber took
this photograph. I really do have bad habits
like Guston. His imagery seems to come to
me when I need it, as does that of Beuys,
Duchamp, Walker Evans, and Man Ray.
FKM: Womans Felt Suit (2013), your ver-
sion of Beuyss Felt Suit (1971), was made
by a seamstress in gray felted wool to fit
your body. Displayed on a wooden hanger,
your suit mimics the look, material, and
even sewn-in label of the Beuys suit. In a
feminist take on his coded materials, your
version has a skirt. You also made two iden-
tical but differently toned and much smaller
Above: Daisy, 2008. Fiberglass object, enamel paint, polyurethane, and sash ribbon, 20.5 x 35 x 9 in. Below:
Backcloth Painting, 2013. Acrylic silkscreen ink on Belgian linen and velvet swag, 64 x 45 x 5.75 in.
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suits. Can you tell me more about this pair
of miniature surrogates for the human fig-
ure?
AL: Girls Felt Suit (2013), which is a light
gray, marled wool felt suit, and Girls Felt
Suit Pink (2013), which is the same material
dyed pink, were both made to the meas-
urements of an average five-year-old. The
size relates to a photo of me as a child in
Coincidence (1994). This is a framed dip-
tych, which consists of a color photo of me
and a black and white photo of Duchamp
taken by Man Ray in preparation for Monte
Carlo Bond (1924). I was five years old
when my father photo graphed me in the
kitchenmy head is soaped up with sham-
poo, and my hair is shaped into a very big
top curl.
FKM: In the original Man Ray photograph,
Duchamps head is enveloped in shaving
lather and his hair peaked into two horns.
He is posing before a gray and black,
vertically striped fabric. Your attraction
to Minimalist black and white stripes led
to your elegant combine Backcloth
Painting (2013), which has a black velvet
swag covering its lower half. Are your
striped paintings related to the photo-
graph?
AL: They are related both to the Man Ray photo of Duchamp and to Backcloth Painting. For
some reason, I am very attracted to stripes. This new piece repeats Backcloth Painting but
with oil paint. I will add velvet swags. Ive also been looking at a photograph by Walker
Evans from the 1930s [Convicts, American South] that depicts convicts. I love the prisoners
black and white horizontally striped suits. I plan to make a diptych of three-inch-wide black
and white and orange and white stripes and will probably call the work Convicts Working.
FKM: Your Home of Perfecto (2013) is a grouping of very large and narrow red-striped quad-
rangular canvases based on a barbershop faade in a photograph by Walker Evans.
AL: The photograph has a big sign advertising Perfecto hair restorer. There is also a woman
in the doorway to the barbershop. I measured her, decided she was pretty much my size,
and built the canvases to approximate the scaled-up size of the building. I was very exacting
in painting the stripes.
FKM: You seem to enjoy painting these patterns. Are you refocusing your attention on oil
painting now?
30 Sculpture 33.1
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Above and detail: Things to walk away with, 2011.
96 found objects, dimensions variable.
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AL: My work is so idea-based that I cant imagine
walking into a studio with just painting materials in
it. Or just sculpture. Because I work with so many
materials and formats, I wouldnt call myself a sculp-
tor, a painter, or a photographer. I think of myself as
a post-conceptual artist. By this, I mean that my work
is opposed to pure conceptualism, which tried to get
away from the objectmy work is all about the object.
FKM: Unlike the so-called neo-conceptualists whose
work involved appropriating well-known imagery,
your work is very personal and embedded in found or
constructed images and objects. You installed a mini-
retrospective at Harvards Carpenter Center for the
Visual Arts two years ago using 96 objects called
Things to walk away with (2011). It was part of a larger
show curated by Leila Amalfitano called Unfinished
Business that included a wall of photographs and
another sculptural work called Back to the Garden
(2011). Things to walk away with was based on the
grid of Le Corbusiers cement floor, but it also reflect-
ed the floor plan of Chartres Cathedral. Each object
was placed according to height to resemble a Latin
cross.
AL: This is one of my favorite installations. Things to
walk away with reflects 50 years of collecting objects,
from the time I was a kid up to the present. In 2010, I was not only preparing for
my mid-career survey, I was also relocating from a studio that I had been in for
20 years. The majority of the objects were hanging around in my studio. There
were all kinds of globes and round objects, including an anatomical eyeball
model, crosses, and a brick. There are stories that go with some of the objects;
others were collected for their beauty. Some were waiting to be manipulated
or included in mixed-media works. Together, they are a retrospective in them-
selves, reflecting the work that I have been making for the last 35 years.
FKM: They reflect memories of a rich life.
AL: Yes, my white wedding shoes are included, and theres a life mask of my
late father. There is a hoof ashtray given to me by my mother, buttons that
Mark Innerst gave me, and the cane from when I got run over. One of my
favorite objects is a vintage cardboard box with a picture of a young girl and
a boy wearing earmuffs. Performance artist Michael Smith pulled it out of a
garbage bin outside the New Museum. I was outside smoking, and it was
freezing cold. He gave me the box as a gesture to keep me warm.
FKM: Every object is jam-packed with associations. The dimensions are listed
in the accompanying brochure as dimensions variable.
AL: The idea is that the piece can get larger some day.
FKM: Is there a common theme in your work?
AL: My works share an underlying theme of the human condition. They are a
reflection of me in the world at any given moment. What affects me deter-
mines my subject matter.
Francine Koslow Miller is a writer living in Boston.
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Back to the Garden, 2011. Britains cast metal farm animals, figures, and accessories, wood, paint, and ground foam on mission table, 35.75 x 46 in.
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Shinique Smiths sculpture, paintings, and collages reflect the
belief that possessions reveal identity, create personas, and
confer power. She is a student of the social totems represented
by clothing and furnishings, observing how they perform along
a spectrum of duty, beginning with function and ending
as narrative. A determined bricoleur, she places a range of mass-
produced thingsincluding clothing, household items, alumi -
num fencing, shoes, and furniturein symbolic ensembles
that replace original meaning with a subversive new identity
that re-creates or resurrects memories and perceptions.
Opposite: The whole realm was his,
2010. Acrylic, rope, and found
objects, 91 x 91 x 61 cm. Above: No
dust, no stain, 2006. Mixed media,
dimensions variable.
BY KATHLEEN WHITNEY
ANONYMOUS EXCHANGES
Shinique Smith
A Conversation with
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34 Sculpture 33.1
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Left: Swaying Beauty, 2007. Clothing, foam, rope, and twine, 60 x 22 x 22 in. Right: Bale Variant No. 0017, 2009. Hand-dyed clothing, fabric, binding, and
wood, 183 x 132 x 132 cm.
Smith gets materials from a variety of sources, including her own wardrobe; at one point, she tore up the wood
floor from her apartment to use in a piece. She also takes advantage of that oddly urban phenomenon, the anony-
mous exchange. In New York, where Smith lives, its common to find unwanted possessions left out for passersby
to claim. Her work is not only about changed and charged meanings, but also about the sequence of use, reuse,
and repurposing that forms the life cycle of things: how clothes travel through time and space, their voyages
through secondhand boutiques or thrift shops and on to resale and the scrap trade in third world countries.
Thoughtfully constructed in terms of relationships and arrangements, Smiths freestanding sculptures,
suspended objects, collages, and wall paintings are based on a formal approach to color, pattern, and design.
Her works take on a number of related formstotems, bales, swooping decorative gestures, and figures.
Although the work is carefully orchestrated, it seems improvised and spontaneous. Smith has said, Im not
attached to the final product, but Im attached to the process of making it. Both abstract and literal, her work
involves viewers in three levels of evaluation: reading the materials as the raw things they are, estimating
their social value, and considering their transformation and new juxtapositions.
Smith earned her MFA from the Maryland Institute College of Art.Her work has been exhibited at the Museum
of Contemporary Art, North Miami; the Studio Museum in Harlem; the National Portrait Gallery, Washington,
DC; the New Museum, New York; Deutsche Guggenheim, Berlin; and MoMA PS1, New York. She has received
awards and fellowships from the Joan Mitchell Foundation, the New York Foundation for the Arts, Skowhegan
School of Painting and Sculpture, and the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council.
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Kathleen Whitney: What led to your inter-
est in using clothing as a material?
Shinique Smith: My mother was a fashion
designer, and I spent a lot of time with her
in fabric stores. She introduced me to the
world of couture and high fashion; the for-
mal qualities of the clothes had a big influ-
ence on me. Many years later, I wanted to
start using color and pattern in my work,
and I liked the ready-made quality as well
as the meaning of clothes.
KW: How do you go about making work?
SS: I save stuff like crazy, and I also use my
own clothes and shoes. I have collections of
clothing, toys, shoes, and furniture. I even
collect gift wrap and ice-cream-cone wrap-
pers. I have chain-link doors and an elevator
gate, which I use like picture frames. Because
my work involves a lot of color and pattern,
I use paint and also dye and bleach the fab-
ric. Im always taking something from one
piece and adding it to another. The work
is bundled, tied, stitched, wadded, and
stuffed together. Things are held in place
by fabric shreds or ribbons or rope; the fur -
niture parts use harder connections like
screws and nails. With the chain-link pieces,
I just stuff clothes and whatever else Im
using in the holes. In all of my pieces, the
clothing is compressed to some degree,
especially in the cubes.
KW: Does the function of a piece of furniture
or clothing influence what you do with it?
SS: I use materials that carry strong asso-
ciationssuits, wedding gowns, sneakers.
I want the message of the garment to
come out, but I also want it to have a new
meaning. I use clothes because they are
more than just their function, and they
are so personal.
KW: Is your work driven by thematic inter-
ests as well as process?
SS: I always have a starting pointa shape
or a conceptbut then, I work sponta-
neously. Im always stepping back to see
how things are progressing, and I stop at
the point where everything I put into an
object comes together in a resolved way.
Everything I do has a consciousness about
it that relates to how we deal with posses-
sions and what happens because of those
relationships. There are many connections
in my work to cultures that use bundling
and tying for spiritual reasons.
KW: Sometimes the work seems abstract, sometimes figurative. Do categories matter to you?
SS: Im working with a lot of abstraction, but I dont set out to make something figurative
or non-figurativeeverything depends on what Im working with and what happens as
I go along. I want my work to be as open as possible. I have many pieces with furniture,
dolls, and stuffed animals in them; sometimes those elements become part of
a pattern of fabrics and colors, and sometimes they remain what they started out to be.
I dont believe in categories because they hold you back. Im not avoiding reality, but
I want transcendence and transformation. I want the viewer to see something new.
KW: There seems to be a strong political and social narrative running through your work.
SS: Im concerned with three different things in my work: making something thats beau-
tiful, commenting on the social relationship people have with their possessions, and
dealing with the politics of clothing. Im not interested in irony; I want to have direct
access to the viewer. Much of my work is politically motivated, but my intention is to
make that interest ambiguous and subtle. Im especially interested in the idea of sur-
plus value, because the value of the workers labor and the value of the finished product
are way out of balance.
KW: How is fashion relevant to your work?
SS: The relationship that people have with their clothes is complicated. Clothes can give a
false identity, but they also represent a desire for self-expression. Sometimes the way people
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Mamificent, 2007. Clothing, climbing rope, stool, plastic, doll, ribbon, and carpet, 122 x 91 x 76 cm.
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use their clothing is like karaokesometimes its
pathetic, sometimes inspired, but it is always using
other peoples words to find social standing and iden-
tity. Sneakers like Nike Air Jordans are a good example;
they signify a number of things, including the owners
affluence and feeling about and involvement with
sports, all above and beyond function.
KW: Do any of your works make a direct link to the
politics of clothing and possessions?
SS: The series of rectangular cubes represents a fairly
direct comment. The bales replicate how clothing is
transported to the third world by resellers and charities.
They compress the clothes into tight bales so that they
can be easily shipped. Theres a lot of exploitation
in reselling clothing, especially in African countries. Usu-
ally the clothes have already been used at least twice. I
use this form, in a modified way, to talk about out-of-
balance exchanges and the connections between the
things we consume and what we desire.
Ive made red, white, and blue flag bales and Afri -
can flag bales. I made one bale out of used wrapping
paper, ribbons, and tags, thinking about the kind of
gifts you return. I made a bale piece for the Battery
Park sculpture park that reproduced how resellers move
the bales around on dollies.
36 Sculpture 33.1
Above: Perfect from the waist, 2009. Clothing, fabric, found
objects, twine, and ribbon, 38 x 22 x 22 in. Right: Bale Variant
No. 0022, 2012. Clothing, fabric, binding, and wood, dimensions
variable.
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At the National Portrait Gallery, I did an installation inspired by a Nikki Giovanni poem
that involved collecting dead rock star memorabiliaKurt Cobain, TuPac, Lisa Left Eye
Lopesand also paid homage to Basquiat and Keith Haring. I used all kinds of star-related
stuff, including lunchboxes, T-shirts, a Cobain flask, and china plates. It was part shrine
and part teenagers bedroom. I did a lot of graffiti-style painting on the walls, had things
hanging on the ceiling, and included a soundtrack of Giovanni reading her poetry.
KW: Tell me about Firsthand, the show you did with students at Charles White Elemen -
tary School in Los Angeles.
SS: The L.A. County Museum of Art has a program that gets the museum involved with
the community. My show was the fifth one theyve had at the school. The first time that
I met with the students, I talked to them about finding beauty in everyday things and
showed images of my work. Then the kids met with their art teachers and made little
three-dimensional collages using some of the ideas we talked about. The show featured
the students work and my work, including a piece inspired by the schools location and
things I found in the area. I wanted to include things that inspired me, so I picked a num-
ber of hats and outfits from the museums collection.
It was a great experience; I believe that mentoring is very important. What I loved
about the kids was the exchange of energy and their lack of judgment. Im incorporating
childrens drawings of flowers into a painting thats being used as the basis of a huge tile
mural. It will be on the wall of a bus depot and is a memorial to the Mother Clara Hale
School in Harlem.
Kathleen Whitney is a writer living in Los Angeles.
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Above: Untitled (Whistlers Mother), 2009. Clothing, fabric, ribbon, rope, twine, and chair, 132 x 112 x 86
cm. Right: This Yellow Shell, 2013. Clothing, fabric, bamboo, ribbon, rope, and twine, 165 x 41 x 30 cm.
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At first the vastness overwhelms; the colors, diversity, intricacy, and textures
bedazzle. Only later does the realization set in that these fantastical crocheted
coral reefs bear an urgent ecological message. Some are based on photographs,
but most are pure imaginative improvisations. The masterminds behind the project
are twins Margaret and Christine Wertheim, and the underlying protagonist is the
Great Barrier Reef, one of the worlds living wonders. The sisters grew up in Bris-
bane, Queensland, home of the Great Barrier Reef, and moved to the United States
in 1991. As Margaret notes, the Reef weighs heavily on the consciousness of Queens -
landers because its under attack.
Margaret, who studied physics and mathematics at university for six years, is a science writer. She
has also written and directed science documentaries for television and authored books on the cul-
tural history of physics. Christine was a painter before earning her PhD in literature and logic; she
now teaches in the critical studies department at CalArts in Valencia, California, where she has also
served as director of the Experimental Writing Program. The Wertheims operate the crochet reef
project through their small nonprofit Institute For Figuring (IFF), which is devoted to raising public
awareness about the aesthetic and poetic aspects of science and mathematics.
Crochet Coral Reef (CCR), which has received overwhelming support, has been primarily exhibited
at art-related venues, though it has also appeared at the Science Gallery in Dublin and the Smith-
sonians National Museum of Natural History in Washington, DC. The art world embrace is com-
pletely the opposite of what the sisters had anticipated, and they deeply appreciate this develop ment.
In September 2014, the exhibition will travel to New York Universitys Abu Dhabi campus. In the
meantime, the Wertheims are crowdsourcing funds for a book about CCR that will chronicle the evolu-
tion of the project and its staggering accumulations of corals, nudibranches, tubeworms, kelp, and
other marine creatures.
Opposite: Coral Forest (detail),
2013. Crocheted and found plastic,
dimensions variable. This page,
left: Evelyn Hardin, Untitled, 2008.
Shower curtain rings and cable
ties, 14 in. diameter. Right: Helen
Bernasconi, Hyperbolic Octopus,
2007. Yarn, 5 in. diameter.
BY SARAH TANGUY
Crossing Disciplines
and Modalities
Margaret Wertheim
A Conversation with

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Sarah Tanguy: How did this cross-disciplinary adventure start?
Margaret Wertheim: The story of the reef involves many different threads. Initially, the
project started with our interest in mathematics. In 2003, we discovered the work of
Daina Taimina, a Latvian mathematician who figured out that you could model hyper-
bolic geometry with crochet. Christine and I were very intrigued because we had grown
up doing crafts. So, we started crocheting using Dainas hyperbolic patterns. For about
two years, we explored it in many ways, and in 2005, we had an exhibition of crocheted
mathematical hyperbolics with Daina in Los Angeles.
Following that, Christine came home one day with a big bag of fluffy woolspink and
orange hairy thingsand she said, Im really sick of crocheting perfectly mathematical
ones. Im branching out. I was a bit hesitant, being trained in science. She started making
aberrations, mutating the pattern, and the pieces immediately started to look organic, like
living things. After a few days, we had a bunch on our coffee table, and we said, They look
like a coral reef, which is not a coincidence, because these are the structures of coral reefs.
And, of course, natural organisms dont ever do things with mathematical perfection.
Theyre not geometrically precise. Then Christine said, We could crochet an entire reef.
We thought this would be a lovely idea. In 2005, there was a lot of coverage in the sci-
ence press about how global warming and rising sea temperatures were devastating
coral reefs. We joked that since the Great Barrier Reef was disappearing, we could cro-
chet a woolen reef to fill the void and memorialize it. Six years later, thats actually
whats happening. Scientists now understand that reefs are sickening and disappearing
not only because of global warming, but also because of another CO
2
-related problem
acidification. The oceans are acidifying so quickly that if current trends continue, reefs
may not be able to create their bony structures at all by the middle of this century.
ST: How do your professional backgrounds fuel this endeavor?
MW: CCR came out of my desire to bring mathematics and science to the public in more
creative and innovative ways. But there is also the artistic dimension of the project. It is
an installation, which we see as extending the tradition of feminist art, especially Judy
Chicagos Dinner Party. We work very hard on the curatorial and sculptural elements
to make it as beautiful as possible. The real genius in that comes from Christine, who
understands both the critical analysis of art and how composition works. What started
as a hobby eight years ago in our living room has been my full-time job for the last three
40 Sculpture 33.1

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Left: Latvian Satellite Reef (detail), 2010. Yarn, dimensions variable. Above: Smithsonian Community
Reef, 2005ongoing. Yarn and plastic, 10 x 16 x 10 ft.
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years. First it took over our house, then it
took over our lives.
ST: And now its taking over other peoples
lives. Could you explain the community reefs?
MW: There are two aspects of the project.
One is a core group of about 40 or 50 people
around the world with whom we partner
directly. They create work for our reefs,
which we curate and fashion into exhibi-
tion-ready displays. Thats the work that
travels around to different cities. Then
theres the other aspect, which occurs
before the exhibitions, when we work with
local communities to teach people these
techniques so they can build their own reef.
The biggest of these is Smithsonian Commu-
nity Reef, which is a gynormous, beautiful
creation. Its the seventh Satellite Reef.
The project has gone truly viral. Since
2009, communities in other cities have
wanted to do it, even though they werent
hosting our exhibition. We work with them
as much as we can through the IFF. Com-
munities all over the world are now involved.
Croatian Reef is being done at a center
for developmentally challenged children.
Another incredibly beautiful reef, which
embodies the spirit of the project, is Lat-
vian Satellite Reef. In 2009, 600 women
and children from all over Latvia made it
under the direction of Tija Viksna, who runs
a little craft gallery in Riga.
These community reefs represent an ever-
growing archipelago. We see them as sis-
ter reefs. Our greatest vision is to one day
have all of the community reefs together
in a single room. It would be marvelous to
have the resources at some point to do
this. Collectively, we call them The Peo-
ples Reef.
ST: Tell me about the technique and the
materials.
MW: Were crocheting these forms because
crochet is the best way that humans have
to make hyperbolic surfaces. Since coral
reefs are hyperbolic creatures, its the logi-
cally necessary medium. It also turns out
that crochet has particularly great qualities
for modeling. Its a bit like clay. And its
a very easy technique to learn. Anyone can
be taught to crochet in about 10 minutes,
but the possibilities of how you can use
it as a sculptural medium are amazing and
endless.

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Above: The Peoples Reef, 2009. Yarn and plastic, installation at the Scottsdale Civic Center. Below:
Ladies Silurian Reef (detail), 2010. Yarn, dimensions variable.
Above: Green Reef (foreground) and Ladies Silurian Reef (background), 2010. Yarn, dimensions variable.
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Crochet accommodates lots of different materials. Everybody starts off with wool, yarns
of all different kinds. But you can use plastic, wire, videotape, and cut-up, recycled plastic
shopping bags. Several people have used beads, like Sue Von Ohlsen, or tapestry yarn, like
Helle Jorgensen, a woman in Sydney. Mieko Fukuhara, a new contributor from Japan, makes
incredibly fine staghorn corals out of thread traditionally used for lace and doilies. Who
would have imagined that a traditional medium like crochet could produce such diversity of
form? Thats one of the reasons why this project has been so successful. The totality of it is
sculpturally beautiful, which raises an interesting issue: CCR takes a huge amount of curat-
ing. We get piles and piles of stuffit basically looks like theres been an explosion in a
thrift shop. We must take all those piles and
make them into an effective exhibition. Chris -
tine and I have honed our skills over the last
six years. We get better, the community
reefs get better, and so its all evolving.
Each iteration grows on whats gone before.
ST: What about the armatures?
MW: We have a language for that. If you
have all of these pieces sitting on a table,
its boring. To make it look great, you have
to create a landscape. Over the years, weve
developed a set of techniques that we call
moundifying and basketizing. We put
felt and batting around baskets and attach
the corals to them to give height. Weve
used laundry baskets, plastic tubs, and
wastepaper baskets as understructures. In
a couple of cases, including Smithsonian
Com munity Reef, the structure is built from
Sonotubes, which are cardboard forms used
to pour concrete for building foundations.
Making one of these reefs involves a huge
amount of creative thinking about how
youre going to construct the landscape
that supports the coral.
ST: You also have different types of reefs.
Toxic Reef was made out of plastic trash in
response to the Great Pacific Garbage Patch.
You call it a kind of evil twin to the Great
Barrier Reef; Toxic Reef is ever- expanding
like the patch itself. Theres also Bleached
Reef.
MW: Bleached Reef invokes the phenome-
non of coral bleaching, which happens
when coral is sick. Corals are symbiotic
organisms. They have such bright colors
because little microorganisms, called zoox-
anthellae, live inside them. The zooxan-
thellae also help the corals feed. When
corals get stressed due to pollutants, ris-
ing water temperatures, and ocean acidifi-
cation, they expel these microorganisms
from their bodies and go white. If healthy
conditions are restored, the corals will get
the zooxanthellae back, as well as their
color. But if conditions stay bad, the corals
begin to die.
ST: What about viewer reactions?
MW: Ill tell you two stories, one funny
and the other touching. CCR has two pieces
made out of electro-luminescent wire, which
was developed by the military for lighting
tank interiors. These pieces look like biolu-
minescent sea creatures. Every time weve
42 Sculpture 33.1
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Above: Toxic Reef (detail), 201011. Crocheted and found plastic, dimensions variable. Below: Bleached
Reef, 2010. Yarn, 48 x 96 x 32 in.
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shown them, men are instinctively drawn to them out
of thousands of other pieces. They walk straight over
and have long, involved discussions about the tech-
nology of these flashy, electrical things. These two
works were made by our oldest contributor, Eleanor
Kent, whos an 81-year-old media artist in San Fran-
cisco. She calls it her granny tech.
The other reaction took place at Track 16 in Los Ange-
les, my hometown. Several groups of women traveled
especially to see the show, and one day, one of them
came up to me virtually in tears and said, This is the
most moving thing Ive seen. The amount of womens
work, the love and the care thats gone into this, and
you putting it all together. To me, that was the great-
est compliment because it is the work of hundreds and
hundreds of people. Its such a different experience from
being in the presence of one persons work (or whats
named as one persons work) in a gallery.
ST: Its like a cathedral when you think about how many
people were involved in creating it.
MW: Many people compare it to the AIDS quilt, and I
think theyre right. At least 5,000 people have now
contributed. Most are not professional artists. The
majority are middle-aged women, and thats the aspect
of the project I feel most proud of.
ST: Do you think that the response is so passionate
because we are desperate for an activity that brings
different people together to express their creativity
not only as individuals but also as a collective?
MW: Theres undoubtedly a huge amount of that. From
the beginning, we conceived of it as a community proj-
ect. When I put a notice on the IFFs Web site, I honestly
thought there would be 30 people at most who might
be interested in this weird fusion of art, science, mathe-
matics, and ecology. Slowly people trickled in, all self-
selecting. If you think about it, this is really what life on
earth is. Life starts very, very, very slowly from very sim-
ple, single-cell organisms four billion years ago, then
gradually evolves until you get to the Cambrian period
about 500 million years ago. Suddenly, theres a wild
explosion of life forms. The project has really been like
that. Its continuing its exponential growth beyond my
wildest imaginings. So Ive had to ask myself the same
question: Why?
Its because of a number of things. One is its very
rare in our society for disciplines as disparate as math,
marine biology and ecology, handicraft, and community
art practice to be brought together. Were used to
thinking of these things in separate categories, but for
me, these disciplinary boundaries are artificial. When
my mother taught me handicrafts, I was falling in love
with mathematics at the same time. As Ive grown up,
it seems more and more that you get channeled into
narrow areas of specialization. Im lucky that having a
twin has enabled me to live two lives. Through Christine, Ive gotten to live
vicariously in the arts. And vice-versa.
This project has been successful because a lot of people are hankering for con-
nectivity and threads between things. They find the increasing specialization
and segmentation of society and our professional lives alienating. Here you are
crocheting, which is a domestic handicraft; but at the same time, you are learning
about the math that ultimately underlies relativity and will show us about the
structure of space-time. Its not just crossing disciplines, its crossing modalities
of being human. Again and again, we hear from contributors and participants
how important it is to them that they are part of something collective. Are you
a fan of Star Trek?
ST: Of course, and I know where this is going.
MW: We think of the crochet reef project as the Borg of craft. Christine and
I are the Borg queens. Theres a beautiful metaphor in the project. Something
like Smithsonian Community Reef is magnificent because it represents the
work of 850 people. No individual could have produced it. Its a whole thats
greater than the sum of its parts.
Art historian Sarah Tanguy lives in Washington, DC.

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Above: Evelyn Hardin, White Spire, 2009. Yarn and plastic, dimensions variable. Below: Fhr
Satellite Reef, 2012. Yarn and plastic, installation at the Museum Kunst der Westkste, Fhr,
Germany.
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BY EDWARD RUBIN
Opposite: See, See What You Cant See,
2012. Dressing table from 1870, porcelain
girl, gold leaf, goose eggs, and blood
coral, 150 x 100 x 5 cm. Above: Ode To
Gaud, 2013. Ceramic roses, resin, deer
antlers, glass eyes, and mosaic, 255 x
250 cm.
In Search of
Universal Dialogue
A Conversation with
In a highly unusual mixture of schooling, Utrecht-based Jackie Sleper
studied at both the College of Agriculture and Horticulture (now
Wellantcollege) and the Utrecht Academy of Visual Arts. While art
school honed her technical skills, farmers school, as she likes to
call it, taught her about the fragility of life, the sanctity of nature, and
the importance of working with others to get the job done. It also
informed the figures of humans, animals, birds, insects, flowers, and
plants that populate her paintings, photographs, and clay, porcelain,
resin, and wood sculptures. Sleper collects her works into highly thea t -
rical, thematic exhibitions. Based on her many trips to China, Mexico,
and India, these shows examineoften with an ironic, humorous, and
surreal touchthe threads that connect people on a daily basis. They
also can be read as narratives in which the solitary beauty of each intri-
cately crafted work reads like a full-blown story of the artists personal
experiences as well as those of humankind.
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Edward Rubin: In lieu of attending a public high school, You studied
for five years at the College of Agriculture and Horticulture. Did
you plan on becoming a farmer?
Jackie Sleper: No, but I also didnt want to go to a regular high
school like everybody else. I wanted to be free, outdoors, and on
my own. The college was some nine miles from my house. In
good weather, I would get there by horse; in bad weather, I took
my bike. When I first enrolled, there were 700 boys and me. I
took all the courses offered in land and garden. I was thirsty for
knowledge. I wanted to know and do everything. I still do.
I milked cows, sheared sheep, delivered calves, planted and raised
vegetables, plowed fields, rode tractors, and fixed engines. I also
wrung the necks of chickens. This farmer experience taught me
about life, the weather, the growth process, the cycle of life and
death, and the behavior of all kinds of birds, animals, and insects.
But the college wasnt totally about farming, there was a full aca-
demic program, too. I had to take Latin, Spanish, French, English,
math, chemistry, and biology.
ER: You mentioned that, at a very early age, it was already obvi-
ous to you, as well as to everyone around you, that you were born
to be an artist. How did this manifest itself?
JS: I was the rebellious one in my family. I wasnt content to sit
silently in my room playing with dolls. At the age of five, I was
already a wild child, always doing the unexpected. When the
family was out of the house, I would rearrange all of the furniture
so nothing was the same when they returned. I also built a little
cave-like house from tree branches in our back yard. To decorate
it, I collected things from the street, as well as small objects from
around the house, and hung them on strings from the ceiling.
I would then lie down on the ground, look up, and think about
what I had created. Even then, I was concerned with beauty. I have
always been a dreamer.
ER: When did the idea of becoming an artist enter into your life?
JS: My parents were not at all supportive of my being an artist. It
was my grandmother, the wise one in the family, who knew that
there was something special about me. She gave me a camera
when I was eight, and I went around documenting everyone and
everything. Around the same time, my aunt gave me a book on
Frida Kahlo. Seeing how beautifully her work depicted the fullness
of life around her affected me deeply. A seed must have been
planted then, because I read every book about Kahlo that I could
get my hands on. As an art student, years later, I wrote stories
in my journal and made sketches and drawings about Mexico. Of
course, I had no idea that I would eventually be going there, meeting
friends and students of Kahlo and Diego Rivera, much less creating
a traveling body of work based on Mexican culture.
ER: After graduating, you waited seven years to go to art school.
Why so long? Were you making art during those years?
46 Sculpture 33.1
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Left: Tenzin, 2006. Porcelain and resin, 105 x 90 cm. From the China series. Right: JIZZ, 2006. Porcelain, red coral, and Bakelite, 20 x 39 cm. From the Black
Jack series.
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JS: I wanted to go to art school, but it was very expensive and my father refused to help
me financially, so I went to work to save the money. I had many jobs. All the while, I was
drawing and painting. Though I had no formal training, I was good enough to be com-
missioned by the cities of Utrecht and Dusseldorf to create murals, which paid well. Dur-
ing my five years at the Utrecht Academy of Visual Arts, I held three jobs simultaneously,
slept very little, spent as much time as possible making art, and had my first child. I
started out as a realist painter and, by the end of the first year, I was also taking photo-
graphs. As far as working in three dimensionsa thought always on my mindit wasnt
until I created Tenzin (2006), a tribute to the Dalai Lama for my China exhibition, that I
felt secure enough to start sculpting. Now there is no stopping me.
ER: Your diverse exhibitions have intriguing titles such as Silent Whispers, Dulce y
Amargo, Black Jack, Shadow of Life, and Soil: Under the Skin of India. How do
you plan such large ensembles? And how do you come up with your titles?
JS: Its a strange thing, and its hard to explain. I dont really plan my exhibitions as
such. I dont even make sketches before I start working on an exhibition or an individual
work; ideas just come to me. Basically, I communicate with everything: the earth, nature,
people, animals, objects, even the higher being. More than thinking what I am going
to do, I feel it. As a teller of stories, I see myself as an intermediary, a midwife. Its as
if some sort of channel opens, and it goes on and on and on. Sometimes an exhibition is
triggered by an event. My mothers death, which set me to thinking about the bound-
aries of pain and suffering, resulted in Black Jack.
My titles are the crown on the head, the summing up of the main idea underlying each
body of work. It was only after visiting Mexico and seeing the joys and hardships that peo-
ple face there that Dulce y Amargo, which
translates to bittersweet, popped into my
mind. The same with China: Silent Whis-
pers refers to censorship.
ER: You work with assistants, curators, vari-
ous craftspeople, and other artists.
JS: I love working with all kinds of people,
including my family, who sometimes model
for my work. I learned first-hand how
to work closely with other people at farmer
school. Its a matter of respecting what
they do, understanding how they fit into
the overall picture, and minimizing your
own ego. Right now, I have two primary
assistants, a husband-and-wife team. Both
are accomplished artists. Oscar Paanen is
my left hand and Yvonne Piters my right.
Below: Debut de Temps, 2009. Brass and antique watches, 25 x 14 x 25 cm. From the Shadow of Life
series. Right: Fertilidad (Fertility), 2008. Terra cotta, clay, porcelain, and jade, 60 x 25 cm. From the
Mexico series.
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They work with me on casting and making molds. They help with
crating and shipping my work to museums and international
exhibitions. I also work with Petra Janssen of Studio Boot, a graphic
arts company in Denbosch; she photographs my work and helps
me to produce a small annual magazine. I also work very closely
with Enzo Forulesano, a professor of ceramics in Florence. I use
ceramic flowers, birds, insects, butterflies, scorpions, rats, and
sheep to adorn my sculptures. I design them myself, make a mold,
create various prototypes, and Enzos students use these examples
to create as many as I need. I also incorporate other manufac-
tured and handmade objects into my work, things that I find in
flea markets, jewelry shops, childrens stores, and factories around
the world.
ER: Why China, Mexico, and India?
JS: Each visit is its own story. I chose to go to China. The unique-
ness of the culture intrigued me, as did the restrictionsvisitors
were not allowed to travel freely. In 2004, when a free zone for
tourists was allowed, I went with my family for six weeks. This
visit resulted in work about Chinas culture, history, politics, reli-
gion, and what it was like being an everyday man or woman
living in todays worldsubjects that I explore in all of my work.
My trips to Mexico and India took root at the Florence Biennale in
2005, when I first showed my China-based work. Mexico was pure
serendipity. Matty Roca, a prominent Mexico-based curator and
one of the biennales jurors, was so impressed with how I pre-
sented life in China that she invited me to do the same for Mex-
ico. Two years later, I returned to the Florence Biennale and won
first prize in sculpture and installation for my Mexico-inspired
work. Thanks to Matty, Dulce y Amargo ended up traveling to
eight museums in Mexico. India is yet another story. I met New
Delhi-based curator Sushma Bahl in 2005, but it wasnt until 2010
that my trips to India, and the possibility of exhibiting my work
there, started to unfold. Sushma and I are in talks with several
Indian museums for a traveling exhibition of my India-inspired
work. We have invited Jivya Soma Mashe, a master of Warli painting,
to participate.
ER: Could you talk about Fertilidad (2008) from your Mexico series,
Follow Me (2009) from Shadow of Life, and Black Eye Star (2010),
Pithora (2010), and Red Fort (2012) from your India-based series?
JS: Fertilidad is dedicated to the fertility of the Mexican people. I used
clay so that the figure would look like a recently unearthed Mayan
sculpture. The man carries a porcelain doll from the 1920s. Sprouting
out of the top of his head are hundreds of tiny colorful animals that
I bought on my first visit to Mexico. The doll is standing on a spray
of turquoise gems. On top of its head is a little amethyst on which
a butterfly has alit. The butterfly is one of my symbols of life. Mexi-
cans, living in a primarily Catholic and agrarian country, immedi-
ately understood Follow Me. All of the objects in the sculpture
relate directly to their personal lives. I found the Madonna statue,
on which I painted a black face and hands, brown hair, and a golden
crown, at a flea market in Maastricht. The sheep, which represent
the people, were designed by me and fabricated in Florence. They
are white sheep, not black sheep, because white sheep follow. To
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Below: Al Dai (I Love You), 2005. Porcelain frogs, rose, and blood red coral,
15 x 19 cm. From the China series. Right: Pithora, 2010. Resin, freshwater
pearls, and antique glass eyes, 125 x 32 x 92 cm. From the India series.
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add a touch of the surreal, as well as a bit of realitybecause people
go every which wayI placed some of the sheep upside down. The
roses, the religious medallions, and the tin hands and legs protruding
from her back are Mexican votive offerings. The sculpture is open
to interpretation. It can be seen as the Madonna praying for the
health of the people, or it can bring to mind Marxs statement that
religion is the opium of the people.
Black Eye Star also has many possible meanings. The boys head,
which I found in a flea market in Utrecht, is made of white porcelain
that I painted. The garland of birds around his neck, bought in a
Christmas store in Saint-Malo, symbolizes freedom. The same with
the dancing butterflies on his head, which also symbolize the souls
of his ancestors. I used a Black Star sapphire to highlight the inten-
sity of the boys third eye. You never know what caste an Indian
child belongs to. Maybe he is an untouchable; if so, then he has no
life as a child. Black Eye Star is saying that every child, regardless
of caste, is free and protected by spirits.
Pithora (2010), a blue monkey sculpture, is the result of a visit
to the ancient pilgrimage site of Galtaji Temple, just outside
Jaipur. It is known as the Monkey Temple because tribes of rhesus
monkeys live there. These monkeys are incredibly cheeky. Theyve
been known to steal, pull your hair, or even worse, hit you. I saw
one particularly proud and beautiful male monkey, and I thought
of him as a metaphor for the Indian man, who has freedom and
holds power, as opposed to Indian women. To emphasize the
monkeys duplicitous nature, I painted a batik mask on his head
to camouflage his actions. I added a codpiece of freshwater pearls
to indicate the sacred status that he enjoys. The seven sculpted
domes of Red Fort (2012)I painted each a different colorrep-
resent different aspects of life in India. They are made from clay
that I collected there. It is my tribute to the seven-domed fort in
Old Delhi, the 17th century of the Mughal emperor Shah Jahan.
ER: Art historian Tineke Rejinders, discussing the lavish decorations
in your work, says that as a hunter, you draw your cultural catch into
your pieceswith grace and beauty. Your use of diverse objects in
composing your sculptures adds an alluring, if not exotic, aspect.
JS: I intentionally juxtapose handcrafted and manufactured objects
with those found in nature. I like to mix low with high, old with
new. Each of my objects, as well as the completed sculpture itself,
tells a story that rattles both brain and eye. Such mixing of past
and present histories encourages a lively conversation between
my work and the viewer. Not coincidentally, this same poetic process
is how we create our own day-to-day reality. And in a larger sense,
it mirrors the integration of society. What I really want my work
to do is to communicate the wild onrushing joy of being alive.
If such an exchange occurs, I am happy.
Edward Rubin is a writer living in New York.
Red Fort, 2012. Clay, shells, gold leaf, mirrors, copper, beads, and papier mch, 50 x 50 cm. From the India series.
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BY MINHAZZ MAJUMDAR
GANESH
GOHAIN
Realizing Metaphor, Memory,
and Meaning
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Ganesh Gohains sculptures and paintings
are very personal, very intense introspec-
tions on myth, memory, materiality, and
metaphysics. Extremely deceptive with their
minimal, simplified forms, these works offer
complex ideations based on his life experi-
ences and conceptual meditations. They are
also deeply rooted in the universal human
search for meaning. Gohain explores
notions of abstraction, the nature of reality,
and the process of art-making. He says that
his work represents a visionary study of the
past, the present, and the future of history.
It is a study of existence to realize the illu-
sion, the reality, and the abstract, which is
a process in search of the truth.
History and remembrance, myth and
meaning, are paramount for Gohain, and
consequently, his sculptures strongly reflect
time and a sense of place. Elements and
incidents from his own history and life jour-
ney serve as the basis for his investigations.
Born into a Hindu family in Assam (north-
east India), Gohain later settled in the west-
ern Indian city of Vadodara. He studied art
in India and then in France at the cole Sup -
rieure des Beaux-Arts du Mans and was an
artist-in-residence at Berllanderi Sculpture
Workshop in Wales and at the Glasgow
School of Art. This foundation of personal
biography supports multiple levels of allu-
sion and metaphor, all drawing on the
ancient cultural and spiritual legacy of India.
He explains that an image has infinite
thought, and it depends on experiences.
Any work of mine has thousand of memo-
ries and questionswhy, when, where.
For Gohain, art-making is a continuous
quest: What is the sculptural language
that I always seek, and what should it be
for me? Meaning of volume, mass, form;
meaning of inner and outer space. With
particular reference to sculpture, his thinking
involves ideas of the architectural, struc-
tural, monumental. Gohain believes that
visual expression depends on visual expe-
rience. It is an individual experience. More
than spiritual, it is personal. No one visu-
ally experiences the same. The thread
of these experiences is grounded in ones
own origin, the root, where one belongs,
the surroundings with which one inter-
acts. Physical/metaphysical, real/surreal
these binaries are almost embedded in our
Opposite: My Table, 200005. Bronze and wood, dimensions variable. Above: Seed become Mountain, 2005.
Bronze, plaster of Paris, rice paper, and wood, 3 elements, 10 x 3.5 x 4.5 ft. overall. Right: Torso from
VadodaraI, 200708. Bronze and steel, 6 x 1.5 x 1.67 ft. Bottom right: Torso from VadodaraII, 200708.
Bronze and chair, 6 x 1.5 x 2 ft.
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bones. Hence it is metaphysical, transcen-
dental. It is the interplay. The very act of the
work is itself a spiritual experience.
Art is transformative for Gohain. Though
he uses events and emotions from his life,
he purges them of purely private preoccupa-
tions and sentimentality in a quest for collec-
tive understanding. As he explains, I always
consider my works as questions to raise
other questions, but between space and
time, perhaps temporary solutions or
answers. His depictions of familiar items
and sights such as chairs, eggs, houses,
trees, and mountains underscore his search
for an easily grasped visual language capa-
ble of revealing that there is more to explore
and know. These archetypal motifs are born
of what Gohain knows, inspired by moun-
tains he has seen, chairs he has sat on, his
house, his fathers houseonly magnified.
The house is not just his, it could belong to
anyone or everyone. As he puts it, In a way,
home is a non-existential term for me. It is
again a mystery. Thoughts could be home.
The chair appears as a diminutive element
in the installation My Table and as a high
pedestal in Torso from VadodaraI. In My
Table, the low chair is a seat for meditation
in front of a table full of carefully hand-cast
metal objects, each one pulled from the
deep recesses of private memory yet ambig -
uous enough to intrigue the viewer. A mul -
titude of golden eggs, symbolizing
poten tialities, rest to one side of the chair.
Gohain attempts to evoke the essence
of an experience, emotion, or object through
his work. His sculptures are about moving
from the definitive to the abstract. He
acknowledges his debt to Constantin Bran-
cusi, whom he considers the father of
contemporary art and not just of sculp-
ture. He sees echoes of Brancusis minimal
form in Hindu sculpture, particularly
in the Shiva-linga, the simplified, phallic
symbol of Shivas generative power. Gohain
is clear that he does not want to be an
Indian Brancusi, but he pays tribute to the
connection in A Book on Brancusi. Gohains
sculptures reflect the same inclination
toward paring down, doing away with all
superfluous bits and distractions until only
a pure core of thought and material remains.
This physical winnowing corresponds to
a related mental process of questioning,
framing, re-questioning, and re-framing
that leaves only what cannot be discarded.
Gohain created Seed become Mountain
when he was casting a piece based on the
design of a seed. When the mold was
opened up, its interior suggested mountains
and valleys, reminding Gohain of his trip
to the mystical Ladakh region. He took this
idea of interconnectedness and metamor-
phosis further in Torso from VadodaraI, a
solid cast bronze sculpture of a male torso,
which is presented alongside Torso from
52 Sculpture 33.1
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Left: A House within me, 200405. Layered photocopies and resin, 7 x 6 x 7 ft. Top left: Foot from Vado-
dara, 2002. Synthetic stone, 68 x 56 x 26 in. Above: Untitled, 19982000. Silver foil, fiberglass, and polished
metal, 120 x 36 x 26 in.
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VadodaraII, which is the bronze cast of
the mold used for Torso I. Here, Gohain
shows the equation between the manifest
and the un-manifest, alluding to esoteric
Indian thoughts on sunyata (emptiness). He
speaks of these sculptures as landscapic
imagery of remembrances. The torso is both
a self-portrait and the evocation of a sculp-
ture from the ancient Harappa civilization
dating back to 2600 BCE.
Material is no simple matter for Gohain,
who is versatile in a variety different medi-
ums. His work has incorporated rice paper,
coffee beans, wood, gold-foil, ink, pig-
ment, ceramics, and photographs. Some-
times, the choice of material is in itself an
act of questioning, influenced both by
his vision for the work and its metaphorical
significance. Bronze, with its heft and
weight, is a preferred medium, but Gohain
also uses resin to mimic stone, as in Foot
from Vadodara. As he says, It is the
expression that matters, not the medium.
The illusionary aspect of resin-becoming-
stone highlights the works preoccupation
with perception, objectivity, and realism.
Gohains two-dimensional works are part
of the sculptural process and a metaphor.
Their imagerytrees, for instanceevokes
the essence of the object portrayed as well
as the particulars of individual examples
photographed by the artist. He distills the
abstract from the concrete through medita-
tive process and monk-like discipline. Asked
about how he alters photographs with paint,
Gohain says, I work on the surface, putting
layer after layer on the printed canvas with
a tiny brush, like modeling on canvas to cre-
ate dimension. The existential space is real-
ity, and my work on the surface is abstract.
I consider it as my skin on the surface.
Gohains titles offer clues to interpreting
individual works and to understanding
his thought process: My titles are always
abstract or questioning, though they
might appear realistic. When I say the title
My Table, it seems like individual experi-
ence, but it is much wider. The loss of
his father spurred Letter to Father, which
Gohain says is concerned with many
thingsrelations, respect, detachment,
attachment, sociopolitical issues, the envi-
ronment, political disturbances in my
birthplace, and my personal attachment
to a person whom I always called Father.
Vadodara, where Gohain moved as a
young man, features in the title of several
works, showing his love for his adopted
city. Gohain believes that often the title
is itself a metaphor and the medium.
Autobiographical yet universal in their
inspiration and symbolism, Gohains works
become multi-layered, metaphor-rich
expressions of how he perceives life and
conceives reality. Redolent with references
to Indian spirituality and cultural mores, his
sculptures retain their inherent conceptual
clarity even when their context is obscure.
Minhazz Majumdar is a writer and curator
based in New Delhi.
Letter to Father, 2007. Bronze and wood, 7 x 2.5 x 2 ft.
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Human Echo
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Tony Matelli
A Conversation with
Double Veg Head 2, 2008. Bronze and vinyl paint, dimensions variable (Fresh: 18 x 15 x 12 in.; Rotten: 4 x 8 x 10 in.).
BY ROBERT PREECE
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Robert Preece: To what extent are your works autobiographical?
Tony Matelli: Less and less. Early on, I was really interested in the
possibility of my work operating within a Romantic framework
work that stemmed from my daily experience, that tried to give
form to my emotions and feelings. I was thinking of Munch. This
was important to me for a few reasons. I wanted to connect with
the viewer in an empathic way, since I was disillusioned with what
I saw as the largely intellectual work around me, which all seemed
academic and dry. I thought that this was hurting art, making it
detached and boring. I felt that if I could connect with a viewers
empathy, then that would empower the work. My first serious work
was a self-portrait, a sculpture of an open cardboard box with my
name printed on the side. It was a kind of declaration: this is how
I want to belike an open box, empty and ready to receive. Through
the years, Ive inserted my own image into the work a lot, but
I have started to move away from that because I think that in some
56 Sculpture 33.1
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Josh, 2010. Steel, silicone, foam, paint, hair, and clothing, 74 x 35 x 18 in.
Tony Matellis imperfect human figures and macabre self-portraits might be described as expressions of hyper-
realistic angst. Over the past 15 years, he has reinterpreted the human condition through an interplay of
humor and horror, a strategy best demonstrated in Total Torpor, Mad Malaise (2003). In this grotesque parody
of a classical reclining figure, a deformed, nude man overcome by boils smiles curiously at us over the remains
of his bingeinga reference to the foot of Tracey Emins iconic Bed (1998), with its carpet-strewn garbage and
associated questions.
Matelli has exhibited extensively in solo and group exhibitions across Europe and North America, including
Personal Structures, a collateral event/exhibition at the 2011 Venice Biennale. His most wide-ranging solo
exhibition, Tony MatelliA HUMAN ECHO, was shown at ARoS Aarhus Kunstmuseum in Denmark in 2012.
Matelli grew up in Chicago and Wisconsin and received a BFA in sculpture from the Milwaukee Institute of Art
and Design and an MFA in sculpture from the Cranbrook Academy of Art. He now lives and works in New York.
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ways it reduced the possibilities of the work. My interests are now
in reducing the works focus. I am still interested in an empathic
connection with the viewer, but Ive largely removed myself. I want
the work to be more expansive, which is to say more abstract.
RP: How do you go about choosing your subjects?
TM: Slowly. I typically start with a very loose notion, a feeling even.
For instance, with Josh, I was thinking about personality, individual
character, and how those things can weigh us downhow we can
sometimes become imprisoned within the accumulation and inertia
of our own character. I was thinking about what it would mean
to be free of those things, how liberating but also how terrifying. I
envisioned an empty cup floating on the surface of waterbuoyant
but also very precarious, ready at any moment to fill and sink. I
then thought of the body in equilibrium. Levitation. One thought
leads to the next for me until I have an unshakable image in my
head. Then thats the thing I try to make.
RP: Do you start with an idea, a subject, or a material?
TM: I guess it starts with a vague subject or idea. Sometimes
a vague formal notion can spark a work. Sometimes I just want
something to sit in space like this or that, but I never begin with
the material. Materials are there to serve ideas.
RP: What were you going after in Fucked (Couple) (2005/06)?
TM: I wanted to make a sculpture about romantic love. Since
love is such an old and, in some ways, clichd or debased idea,
I needed to find a way for it to feel fresh and relevant. Sometimes
the best way to speak to something powerful is to powerfully rep-
resent its opposite. I wanted to represent all of the possible adver-
sities to romantic love and to humanity in generalto absurdly
represent the complications of life through extreme cartoon vio-
lenceand I thought I would make the power of these figures
connection even more potent and visible. The two figures are
impaled and suffering all kinds of absurd trauma, yet they still
manage to move forward. They still manage to hold hands. On
his arm is a tattoo that says, True love forever. This is the arm
that holds his partner; in fact, their joined limbs are untouched
by violencethose arms are pure.
RP: What are you trying to say in Total Torpor, Mad Malaise (2003),
with its grotesqueness, classic pose, and staged quality?
TM: Total Torpor, Mad Malaise is my third self-portrait. I was most
interested in the combination of a body dysmorphia, grotesquely
reified, and a comically stoic disposition. This gets back to my
idea of empathic connection with a work of art. There is an almost
anxious identification with this sculpture. It is a sort of reimagined
Greek statue, one that has been disfigured by the anxieties of
contemporary life.
RP: It must be fun to watch reactions to this work.
TM: I honestly dont enjoy watching people look at my work. It feels
too personal, and Id rather be in another room or on the plane home.
Fucked (Couple), 2005/06. Silicone, urethane, steel, hair, fiberglass, tools, underwear, and smashed piano, view of Installation at Uppsala Konstmuseum, Sweden.
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RP: Do you see Old Enemy, New Victim(2007) as an illustration of
earths interspecies and environmental battles?
TM: Absolutely not. I was thinking about my relationships to other
people. I wanted to make a work that represented two sets of vic-
tims. There is a former oppressor, the fat chimp, and a present
oppressor, the emaciated chimp. How viewers read the workand
which character they identify withdepends on how they perceive
their current position in life. Although I use elements of nature in
my work, I dont care about nature as a subject. These are just
metaphors for me. I dont really care about chimps; I dont really
care about weeds: I only use these things to talk about us.
RP: How do you go about making a hyperrealist sculpture like Old
Enemy, New Victim?
TM: I try to think about the best, most interesting way to express
an idea. After that, its almost all execution. I start with a series
of small maquettes or collages to get the composition as I want
it. Then, I move on to posing and photographing models in posi-
tions based on my collages. Next, I start constructing armatures
for the clay work, while keeping in mind how things will get molded
and cast and reassembled.
This one was particularly involved because every little thing
needed to be custom-made, including the teeth and eyes for all
three chimps. The mold-making was a bitch; and all this is before
reassembly, clean up, painting, and all the hair work. Obviously
this is done with assistants. The entire process for the first edition
of Old Enemy took about eight months. The subsequent two edi-
tions were much faster, because the mold-making and sculpting
were already done and we had the learning curve under our belts.
RP: Which work in the ARoS installation was the hardest to make?
TM: Jesus, everything is hard to make. Lost & Sick was difficult
because it was the first big thing I ever made, and I did it all myself
while working art assistant jobs. It took about a year with that
schedule. Aside from that, Old Enemy takes the cake. It was com-
plicated and involved many new things for the studio. After making
that work, I felt like I could make just about anything that I could
imagine.
RP: Your works rely very heavily on craftsmanship. How did you
learn, or learn to manage, this?
TM: I suppose Ive always had an aptitude for it. When I was a kid,
I was really into building models and dioramas, which incorporated
almost the same skills that I use now. Unfortunately art school
erased a lot of this. I think that I lost manual skill because I got
interested in different things. I ignored those skills for six years.
I remember being in figure sculpture class and thinking that it was
58 Sculpture 33.1
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Installation view with (left) Total Torpor, Mad Malaise, 2003, silicone, human hair, and urethane foam, 150 x 115 x 180 cm.; and (right) Yesterday (Large
Card Tower), 2009, painted bronze, urethane, beer cans, and rub-on transfers, 213 x 91 x 55 cm.
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the dumbest, most irrelevant thing in the world. Then, when I actu-
ally wanted those skills, I had to learn them on my own. Now Im
able to hire technicians and other artists who are much better than
I am at these very specialized things. Ultimately the work would
suffer under my own technical limitations.
RP: Youve used mirroring and the appearance of dust in Josh
(2010) and Arrangement (2012). Is this about offering another
viewpoint? And why is BITCHES spelled out in the dust?
TM: Sometimes its simple and sometimes its pretty complicated,
but these pieces have related, though different motivations. With
Josh, I wanted to create a simple image of personified ambivalence.
Arrangement is also pretty simple, an image of beauty upended
a beautiful thing made strange, but still beautiful.
The mirrors are similar in that they take a known thing and
complicate it. I wanted to undermine the idea of a mirrors clarity.
A mirror is all about the objective projection of subjectivitythe
truth of ones own image. I wanted to complicate it by adding
traces of other people through the dust of time, interwoven with
ones own image. Instead of seeing yourself clearly, you see your-
self through multiple layers of dust and finger traces of other
people. Names and words written and crossed out, vulgarities
and shout-outs, and in the background your own image. Ultimately,
I wanted them to feel like cave paintings or palimpsests.
RP: Who is Josh?
TM: Josh is a close friend of mine. Its the first time that I made a
proper portrait of someone other than myself. He inspired the work
and, in a strange way, embodies what I was trying to get at abstractly.
RP: Are there materials that you really like or dont like at all?
TM: I like bronze because it stays put. Its easy to paint and easy
to fix. It does what you say. Sadly its not appropriate for every-
thing. I hate silicone as a finished sculpture material. Its very
hard to work with in almost every way, but I cannot avoid it. Fig-
ures almost always need to be made of it.
RP: What were some of your key breaks or opportunities?
TM: In graduate school, I met the person who would become my
first dealer. That was a very key break. And there have been others.
I made Fucked (Couple) for a group show at ARoS, and based on
that work, they invited me to do a large survey exhibition. It goes
to show that you need to be trying all the time, 100 percent. You
never know where a future opportunity will come from.
RP: Who are your artistic influences?
TM: I dont love talking about this stuff, but for the sake of conver-
sation, I would say Jeff Koons and Ivan Albright. Koons because of
his determination to imbue conceptual ideas with seductive
power. This is really the lesson of religious art, but I wouldnt
know it if not for Koons. And Albright was one of my first art expe-
Old Enemy, New Victim, 2007. Steel, fiberglass, silicone, paint, and yak hair, 37.5 x 72 x 62 in.
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60 Sculpture 33.1
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Above: Abandon, 2006. Painted bronze, dimensions variable. Below: Lost & Sick, 1996. Aqua-resin, FGR, plaster, paint, and steel, 79 x 100 x 87 in.
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riences. There is a great collection of his
paintings at the Art Institute of Chicago,
and I remember being struck by their anx-
ious energy and detail. They seemed to
vibrate with nervous tension. Later in life
that spoke very clearly to me.
RP: Are there other, perhaps stronger influ-
ences on your work?
TM: I spoke earlier about toy model-making,
which is still really strong in me. My first
experience with what I would call narra-
tive sculpture was playing Dungeons and
Dragons. The game takes place mostly
in the mind, but it is often accompanied by
miniature pewter figures that represent
imagined characters. This was when I
started to invest in narrative figure sculp-
ture, and I see a very clear lineage from
that to what I was doing a few years ago.
RP: Was there anything that you didnt
learn in art school that you wish you had?
TM: Tons of things. I went to a somewhat
provincial undergraduate art school, and
this was before the Internet, so there was
almost no access to contemporary art. The
school made little or no effort to bring
it in, and I was left on my own. I guess this
is good and bad, but it was a very rude
awakening when I met students from bet-
ter schools. I felt as though my school was
actively withholding information from
me. In many ways, it was a reactionary art
environment.
When I visit schools now for lectures,
the main thing that seems to be missing
from the students education is a knowl-
edge of how the art world works. This is
primarily because the teachers have no
idea. Art school should be a little like a
vocational school, like welding school or
cooking school. It should not be a tradi-
tional liberal arts education, it should be a
hybrid education. For some reason, art
schools completely ignore the professional
aspect, as though art is a privileged part
of culture above commerce, professional
status, and rules. I think this idea is harm -
ful to artistsand to art. The more that
schools ignore how students can and will
function in the world, the more baristas
we will have.
RP: What are your future plans?
TM: None, except trying to further the ideas I find most interesting. I dont have a scheme;
Im not a strategic artist. I dont want the worldI just want the ability to follow some new
and strange paths within it.
Robert Preece, based in Rotterdam, is a Contributing Editor for Sculpture and the Editor
of Art Design Publicity magazine <www.artdesigncafe.com/Art-Design-Publicity-mag>.
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Arrangement, 2012. Painted bronze and glass,
94 x 40 x 61 cm.
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________________
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In Collaboration with:
The Ogden Museum of Southern Art
The Contemporary Art Center New Orleans
Renaissance New Orleans Arts Hotel
New Orleans Arts District
Sponsored in part by:
New Jersey State Council on the Arts/ Department of State, a Partner Agency of the National Endowment
for the Arts and by funds from the National Endowment for the Arts.
For More Information:
Visit www.sculpture.org/nola2014 for conference updates and to join our mailing list for this event.
Call for Papers Opens January 2014
For submission updates, check the website at www.sculpture.org/nola2014
Questions:
Contact events@sculpture.org or USA 609.689.1051 x302
Visit the Conference website for more information!
Save the Date
24th International Sculpture Conference
New Orleans, Louisiana
October 14, 2014
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Ntw osK
Gregg Louis
Nohra Haime Gallery
Hair is a loaded subject. Tied to gen-
der, ethnicity, class, age, and health,
it reveals identity. If we care enough
about our hairand provided that
we have enough to make it signal all
that we want it toit can say a lot
about who we are, where we come
from, how we see ourselves, what
our views are, and who we look up
to. These observations were prompted
by the eerie and strangely effective
environment of Gregg Louiss recent
show, where sculptures built up from
artificial wigs and faux fur seemingly
floated in mid-air, suspended on thin
black metal rods rising from the
floor. In the press release for Psychic
Mnagerie, Louis states that
the Inklings, as he calls these works,
were inspired by the idea of gazing at
clouds and discovering recognizable
forms in their abstract masses. The
success of his sculptures lies in their
use of familiar materials to create
forms that teeter between abstrac-
tion and figurationmany of these
bodies contain hints of life.
All mammals possess hair, though
in widely varying degrees. In these
works, Louis suggests an out-of-con-
trol animal lifea perfectly apt idea
in this age of genetic manipula-
tionswith an abundance of luxuri-
ant hair. Real tusks or horns and
glass eyes give character and varia-
tion to some of these otherwise soft,
anthropomorphic forms. At times,
a single eye looks out from under a
mass of straight or curly hair, which
can add up to a hairy, wild, Cyclo -
pean monster, though some of these
creatures appear docile, shy, or
scaredat least, we interpret them
as such. Louis, who is interested in
the psychology of seeing, raises the
question: What does it take to make
a mass of hair look threatening? He
understands that hairor the lack
thereofis about having a look, and
some looks raise more alarm in
certain circles than others. The addi-
tion of a horn, tusk, or leering eye
increases the tension.
Inkling No. 4 (2012) consists of dark
pink synthetic hair over an invisible
foam core, arranged to give an
inkling of a head raised on top of a
mighty neck emerging from a short
horizontal bodylike those over-
groomed dogs that one spots on
Madison Avenue, though here trans-
formed into a thoroughly artificial,
eroticized object. Intimations of Lil
Kim and Rihanna, with a touch
of Pink, lurk around the corner. The
femme fatale is more explicit in
Inkling No. 10 (2012), which consists
of a long head of dark red hair, with
two tusks rising from the sides of the
(imagined) skull in a vision of enticing
evil. Inkling No. 16 (2013) resembles
a fragmentary phallic monu ment like
the ones carved out of marble during
the 6th century BCE on the island of
Delos, but rendered soft and feathery,
with faux fur shifting in places from
dark yellow to red.
Thus, we move to the nether regions,
and pubic hair pops up again in
Inkling Wallpaper (2013), which cov-
ered one wall of the gallery, where it
reviews
Gregg Louis, installation view of Psy -
chic Mnagerie, with (background)
Inkling Wallpaper, 2013.
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72 Sculpture 33.1
served as a playful backdrop. In the
wallpaper, Louis toys with photo-
graphic images of synthetic hair and
faux fur, which mirror each other
horizontally and vertically at different
distances (some forms are smaller
than others) within a field of white.
His interest in play, symmetry, pat-
tern, chance, and mental structuring
of abstract configurations culminates
in the Shadows (all from 2012),
which were produced by applying
sunless tanning lotion to sheets of
paper folded vertically down the mid-
dle and then opened. The process
gives rise to insect-like forms and
mask- and skull-like configurations,
which can be funny, frightening,
snarling, sad, or smiling. Toying with
this form of expression (a childhood
favorite for many people) led Louis to
his quirky, off-the-wall wallpaper
design. The Rorschach tests, tinted
golden brown, take us back to
Warhols colossal Rorschach paint-
ings, Rondinones large masks, the
world of dreams, the subconscious,
and the unknown. Louis, with his
clearly stated interest in Eros and
Thanatos, recognizes his debt to
Surrealist ideas, forms, and practices.
Freud would have been intrigued by
this body of work, and Breton would
have extended his blessing.
Michal Amy
los AWsttts
Steven Claydon
David Kordansky Gallery
In this exhibition, English artist
Steven Claydon presented a group of
sculptures that, despite their concep-
tual nature, are oddly traditional and
highly theatrical. The work is con-
cerned with communicating connec-
tions between matter and infor ma-
tion, meaning and status. Because of
this, interpretation depends on mem-
ories, associations, and implied
meanings instilled in the objects. The
fact that these meanings cant be
pinned down accentuates the thing-
ness of the works, their dual position
as material projections and reposito-
ries of social values. Claydon pro-
duces a distancing and somewhat
mysterious experience that, regard-
less of its coolness, still invites
absorption and engagement. While
working with notions of beauty and
formal relations, he also critiques
these values.
Shot through with paradox, the
works were also permeated by nau-
tical and aquatic references, partic-
ularly the wall-hung assemblages.
Perhaps the most accessible objects
in the show, the wall pieces com-
bine painting, collage, and sculp-
ture, using elements such as straw,
ceramic, cuttlefish ink, seaweed,
and cellophane tape. All of these
elements are framed, as if in vitrines,
within shallow, tinted Perspex boxes.
One example, Saturated Triangle
(double sea-lion), takes the form of
a pinkish-tinted, equilateral trian-
gle. An image of a fish is painted on
a circular piece of canvas riveted
to the face of the Perspex; the back-
ground of the vitrine is covered
in industrial red. Two small cast-
ceramic objects that look like Chinese
dragons are mounted to the upper
right surface, while the middle
and lower parts of the triangle are
crammed full of a synthetic straw
that resembles crumpled, gold
Saran Wrap. All of the objects in this
vitrine could be at home in a small
aquarium.
One sculpture dominated the
showa large red, yellow, and gold
object. Sc-scaffold (London Prick) con-
sists of a somewhat defaced neo-
classical bust of a bearded man dis -
played on a dull red, Minimalist
Far left: Gregg Louis, Inkling No. 4,
2012. Foam, metal, and synthetic
hair, 23.5 x 16 x 8 in. Left: Gregg
Louis, Inkling No. 10, 2012. Foam,
metal, tusks, and wigs, 69 x 8 x 9 in.
Below: Steven Claydon, Saturated
Triangle (double sea-lion), 2013. Oil
on canvas, laminated wood, ceramic,
synthetic straw, Perspex, and rivet,
36 x 36 x 4 in.
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structure. The object seems some-
how eroded, as if rescued and par-
tially restored. Its front is painted
bright safety-yellow, while the
backneatly divided from the front
by a bubbled seamhas a golden
shine. The word London is stamped
low on the metallic, back side.
Though the sculpture is probably a
portrait, it has been salvaged from
the past and brought into a present
where meaning is diminished and
forgotten.
Claydons work reflects a societal
anxiety about objectswhat they
mean to and say about the viewer,
what uses they serve above and
beyond function. This gives his sculp-
ture a humorous, and melancholy,
quality. The mystery lies in the poly-
morphous semantics; neither the
artist nor the viewer has the ability
to nail down a meaning. Claydon
makes it a matter of assigning a
name.
Kathleen Whitney
SAW IsAWct sco
Alan Rath
Hosfelt Gallery
Electronic arts pioneer Alan Rath has
been making robotic sculptures that
challenge the boundaries of biomor-
phic projection since the 1980s. Each
sculpture in his recent exhibition,
Irrational Exuberance, has a person-
ality of its own. This individuality
is made evident through specific pat-
terns of whimsical and often quirky
movements. Fabricated from alu-
minum, fiberglass, and feathers, his
creations give the appearance of
independent action, though they
depend on small industrial motors
programmed with open-ended algo-
rithms. Rath, an MIT engineering
graduate, definitely has the skills to
infuse these complex computerized
sculptures with an enchanting
animation that hovers on the edge
between industrialized machinery
and sentient being.
The nine fluffy white ostrich feath-
ers of Fa Fa Fa emulate the petals
of an exotic tropical flower. Their soft
undulations, which imply boas and
opulent femininity, vacillate between
seduction and evasion. As in all of
Raths sculptures, the action is trig-
gered by viewer proximity; the work
comes to life when someone draws
near and falls silent as they walk
away. Affixed to the end of a base
that resembles a music stand, the
feathers open and close, revealing,
but more often concealing, a black
speaker from which a hard aluminum
bulb protrudes.
Forever vibrates in a quite different
manner, evoking a nervous energy
with sexual implications. Two partial,
feathered arcs are attached to the
wall to create an elongated form,
part insect, part vagina dentata.
Moving like elegant lashes or moth
antennae, the pheasant feathers
occasionally reach out to caress the
air or embrace a passerby. When
the movement shifts and begins to
take on an unnerving orgasmic
quality, the attention (which is flat-
tering at first) becomes embarrass-
ing and annoying. At the exhibition
opening, discussion focused on
whether or not the work chose its
collaborators. Did it react to some-
thing specific in various people,
something that determined its res -
ponse? Did it prefer some viewers
over others? Was it you, in particu-
lar, that it wanted to touch? The
complexity of the variations left room
to imagine a narrative of interac-
tion.
Absolutely floated overhead with
a slow, dreamy motion as if sus-
pended in water. Supported on a sin-
gle metal rod, the configuration
of feathers spread out like a grand,
Left: Steven Claydon, installation view
of Total Social Objects, 2013. Below
left: Alan Rath, Forever, 2012. Phea -
sant feathers, aluminum, polyethyl-
ene, fiberglass, custom electronics,
and motors, 90 x 60 x 12 in. Below:
Alan Rath, Fa Fa Fa, 2013. Ostrich
feathers, fiberglass, poly propy lene,
aluminum, custom electronics, motors,
and speaker, 73 x 80 x 54 in.
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pulsating umbrella covering the
space, leaning a bit to one side with
precarious delicacy. The motors
emitted a soft, barely audible sound,
the force behind the movement.
This friendly, albeit large beast was
still intimidating, standing 15 feet
tall.
Rath creates a dizzying range of
personalities through slight yet pro-
found alternations in movement
and stance, while keeping the aes-
thetics of the engineered mechanics
deliberately raw and simple. Black
wires, exposed hardware, metal
stands, speakers, and fragile-looking
connections all come to life with
a few wiggles and beeps. The works
whimsically illustrate the predisposi-
tion of the human brain to search for
signs of life in the most inanimate of
objects.
Donna Schumacher
8os1oW
OccupyING the Present
HarborArts Outdoor Gallery
HarborArts Outdoor Gallery not only
features a permanent collection
of large-scale sculpture, it also hosts
temporary exhibitions at the Boston
Harbor Shipyard and Marina. Located
in East Boston, directly across the
harbor from the Institute of Contem -
porary Art, the 14-acre shipyard offers
its grounds, walls, and roofs to artists
with the imagination to re- envision
the industrial environment as a home
for sculpture.
OccupyING the Present, a show
of 15 site-responsive installations
curated by Elizabeth Michelman,
filled the bustling shipyard with care-
fully orchestrated works that inhab-
ited and complemented the built
environment. Many of the sculp-
tures evolved over the duration of
their installation, slowly transformed
by the harsh harbor weather.
Nature was a welcome collaborator,
and the theme of our relationship
to the natural world echoed through -
out the show.
The peak of Peter Lipsitts massive,
dense pyramid on stilts, Hell and
High Water, mirrored the tall masts
of surrounding boats and the spires
of skyscrapers across the harbor.
The pyramid, coated with black roof-
ing membrane and textured with
organic patterns like cracks in a
desert landscape, formed a sepul-
chral reminder of the irreversibility
of deaththe death of things that
we take for granted in our environ-
ment.
A large transparent water cooler
bottle, inscribed with the words,
Tell me, pointed across a narrow
inlet to a series of parallel colored
lines that stretched along decaying
piers. The lines signaled continu-
ously rising sea levels. Using art as
an active conveyer of environmental
concerns, Susan Israel, who created
Rising Tides, invited viewers to place
their own messages in a bottle, as
comments on the changes wrought
by global warming.
Catherine Evans frequently uses
sea anemones, which can regrow
after sustaining damage, as a sym-
bol of regeneration. She situated
Sea Anemone/Boston at the end of
the main pier. Colorful fuchsia, tur -
quoise, and pink plastic fibers
nestled into the cores of weathered
pilings. Other cores in the same
cluster were filled with discarded
bottles, starkly illustrating the choices
that we make.
Some artists developed a conversa-
tion around the waterfront itself. In
Natural Repetition: Boston Harbor
Rockweed, Wendy Wolf made use of
several buildings. She collected rock-
weed growing around the shipyard
and used it to generate patterns for
the wheat-pasted paper forms that
floated over the brick faades. As her
rockweed began to curl and peel,
it seemed to return to its aquatic ori-
gins. Nearby, the rhythms of a ship-
yard symphonytugs, engines, fog
horns, waves, and clanking cables
reverberated from a narrow, dark
space between two structures.
Sounding, a concealed digital record-
ing by Liz Nofziger, intensified the
sounds and spaces of the harbor,
exposing a beauty that we often fail
to recognize.
John Powells Collected Reflection
came alive in unexpected ways when
its painted and mirrored Plexiglas
surface reflected the viewers body.
In an instant of surprise, the distinc-
tion between self and environment
broke down as we saw ourselves
amid the boats, buildings, and har-
bor. In Nora Valdezs Still Waiting/
Todava Esperando, a diminutive
carved limestone figure curled into
itself, seemingly imprisoned in a
geologically ancient state of perpet-
ual waiting. The question it posed,
What are we waiting for? could
apply to many of the issues raised
by OccupyING the Present, which
challenged us to consider our role
in this present moment.
B. Amore
Below left: Catherine Evans, Sea
Anemone/Boston, 2013. Repurposed
plastic fiber, dimensions variable.
Below: Nora Valdez, Still Waiting/
Todava Esperando, 2009. Indiana
limestone, 17 x 13 x 12 in. Both from
OccupyING.
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Kathleen Elliot
Tenri Cultural Institute of New York
Kathleen Elliots glass sculptures
straddle the line between ritual and
playfulness. Her work, which stems
from a love of natural forms, explores
how the wonders of nature, big and
small, have an indisputable calming
effect on us as we muddle through
the distractions of daily life. Works
such as Whispering Vine (2008)
recall ceremonial dance, as a circle
of latticed glass, capped with upward-
reaching leaves, forms a web of
ideals. Similar, but more colorful
works such as Untitled Miniature
(2008) and Untitled Miniature (2009)
have the same basic construction,
though their intimate scale makes
them even more playful and charm-
ing.
Growing in a Land Far Away (2007)
represents Elliots exploration into
alternative realities via the visionary
writings of Carlos Castaeda. As a
new observer of Elliots work, I was
unaware of the connection, and I
saw this work more as a transitional
gesture in which the suggested
movement of the metal framework
supporting the glass botanical ele-
ments introduces thoughts of tran-
sition through abstraction.
Elliots process of turning tubes
and rods of clear glass into organic
shapes can, at times, be quite politi-
cal. Transgenics comes to mind
in When Plants and Animals Merge,
Yellow Toes (2012). Here, a freakish
cross between a horse and a plant
yields a frail beast that feeds solely
on the suns life-giving rays. A beau-
tiful work, no doubt, yet the frailness
and folly of such hybridization can
only bring worry and concern.
Works addressing our heavily proc -
essed food supply reveal a deeper
analysis of science playing god. In
Questionable Food (2012), fruit cov-
ered in soda-can peels ripens on
clear branches. The fruits of Ques -
tionable Food #3 (2013) come
wrapped in pre-packaged breakfast
food skins. Aside from the obvious
commentary on the sad lack of
wholeness in our consumable goods,
Elliot takes great pains to cut and
stitch together each piece of faux
fruit, making these works a com-
pelling combination of aesthetics.
The technical intensity adds to the
Frankenstein-like look, forcing us
to think about the potential disaster
lurking inside the skins.
The more minimal side of Elliots
symbolism can be seen in Pome -
granate Pod (2012) and Tumbleweed
Before its Tumble (2011). Here,
growth and movement overtake the
narrative, while the complexities
behind the fabrication seep into the
viewers consciousness. Elliots tech-
nique comes to a peak in Periwinkle
Vine (2013). The intensity of the col-
ors, the mix of springy spirals emerg-
ing from a base of interlocking
branches, the border of proud leaves,
and the dance of octopus-shaped
podsall created with flame-worked
and sandblasted glasschallenge
the uninitiated to unravel her process
of design and fabrication.
Dominick Lombardi
Ntw osK
Frieze New York 2013
Randalls Island Park
With Paul McCarthys 60-foot-tall
Balloon Dog leading the way, sculp-
ture made a strong showing at
Frieze New York 2013. Nearly every
gallery displayed three-dimensional
work, often involving installation
or non-traditional materials, making
it clear that sculpture can be made
from and be just about anything
these days.
Located in a large, architecturally
designed tent on the grounds of
Randalls Island in the middle of the
East River, this second Frieze art fair
was even larger than the first, fea-
turing 55 New York-based galleries
in addition to galleries from 32 coun-
tries. Following the current trend at
international art fairs, emerging gal-
leries had their own sections: Focus,
for curated projects or solo shows
from galleries less than 10 years old,
and Frame, solo presentations for
galleries in existence for no more
than six years. Alongside the tent,
a small outdoor sculpture park
curated by Tom Eccles showcased
both established and emerging
artists. For all the attention paid
at Frieze to making contemporary
art an appealing commoditya spa-
cious layout; many, many restau-
rants (including a tribute to FOOD,
the legendary restaurant opened in
October 1971 by Gordon Matta-Clark
and Carol Goodden); and tastefully
designed rest stops by Mateo
Tannatt (part of the commissioned
Frieze Projects curated by Cecilia
Alemani)the outdoor sculptures
had the best placement for viewing:
one could relax, enjoy the great nat-
ural light and New York skyline, and
leisurely appraise the work seem-
ingly outside the hubbub and hype
of the fair.
Given this favorable setting, a num-
ber of pieces in the sculpture park
stood out, most notably Tom
Friedmans wonderfully lyrical Circle
Dance, with its Matisse-like ring of
enthusiastically frolicking nudes. Cast
to look like crumpled aluminum foil
(which nicely contrasted fabricated
artifice with the naturalness of the
poses), these dancing bodies spoke of
both pleasure and the vexed relation-
ship between man and nature, a sub-
text shared by a number of works on
view. Estrangement and environmen-
tal exploitation were also at play
in Pae Whites ceramic briquettes
shaped as a fox, owl, turtle, and frog;
Right: Kathleen Elliot, Periwinkle Vine,
2013. Flameworked and sandblasted
glass, 15.5 x 10 x 3 in. Below: Kath -
leen Elliot, Questionable Food, 2012.
Glass and mixed media, 19 x 13 x 4
in.
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76 Sculpture 33.1
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Fiona Connors miniaturized faux
spa/day camp made of bird houses
and buildings that sensibly doubled
as storage cabinets; and Nick van
Woerts Primitive, a body resembling
the Hangman game formed with
casts of fossilized twigs suspended
from a steel girder.
Many artists followed McCarthys
lead, using irony and inversion to
comment on contemporary culture.
In the case of the giant red rubber
Balloon Dog, appropriation, scale,
and a rude literalism wittily sub-
verted Jeff Koonss platinum dog
collectables. Saint Clair Cemins over-
sized sculpture of a hammer in a
Plexiglas box conflated display with
dysfunction, while Andreas Loliss
seemingly scattered collection of flat-
tened or emptied cardboard boxes
and Styrofoam strips inverted the
lightness of the original materials
with cast cement. (Indoors, Lolis
added another kink to the concept
by presenting a similar collection
of discarded boxes and construction
materials, now carved in marble.) In
the sculpture park, Loliss work was
installed with sculptures by Franz
West and Charles Long. Between
them, these works argued for an
alternative to the fetishized object,
proffering the potential of inventive
abstraction and pragmatic play.
Under the tent, Marianne Vitale
moved the outdoors inside with
Cockpit, a found sculpture that
meditated on rural decay and vanish-
ing vernacular architecture. Using
part of a barn wall and a roof and
steeple painted black as if burnt,
Cockpit introduced a reference to
decline and falling production values
that surfaced in a number of other
works. Many of these accentuated
the handmade and alternative sculp-
tural materials, including Nelvin
Aladas macram pieces, Haegue
Yangs improvised sculptures of yarn,
light bulbs, and other found objects
hanging on clothing racks, Sookyung
Yees reconstructed ceramic shard
vessels, and Pae Whites supermar-
ket-like display of flowers, plants, and
scattered leaves fashioned from cut
paper. Other artists preferred double
entendre, riffing on the real world
through facsimile and false illusion-
ism. This approach could be seen in
Joseph Grigelys clear urethane casts
of a woodstove and buckets, Pedro
Reyess recycled gun sculptures, and
Tom Friedmans sly comments on sur-
veillance and consumption in over-
scale reproductions of pizza, candy,
and bread presided over by a mock
video camera. While these works
participated in and critiqued the
marketplace, Alexandre da Cunhas
Mixer (Americana), a revolving
cement mixer drum painted with
blue diamonds, focused attention on
the beauty of functional form while
reminding us that, in the politics of
display, sometimes less is more.
Susan Canning
Ntwos1, 8Mobt l stAWb
Maya Lin
Queen Anne Square
Maya Lins The Meeting Room, a redo
of Newports Queen Anne Square,
incorporates the talents of two long-
time Lin collaborators: calligrapher
and stone carver Nicolas Benson and
landscape designer Edwina von Gal.
Together, the three have created
a serene and inspiring public space
that offers opportunities to interact
on many levels with a unique envi-
ronment.
The Newport Restoration Founda -
tion commissioned Lin to re-envision
the square in honor of the late philan-
thropist Doris Duke, who preserved
many of the citys 18th-century build-
ings. Lins concept for The Meeting
Roomsuggests a kind of archaeologi-
cal dig that can also be related to her
career. In terms of sculpting the land,
she has changed a once flat, angled
expanse into a gently rolling land-
scape. The result is less formal than
Groundswell or Wave Field, but it
relates to those previous landworks.
The constructed elements of
The Meeting Room consist of three
stacked stone foundations built
on the original footprints of the 18th-,
mid-19th-, and early 20th-century
buildings that once occupied the site.
von Gal nested Lins structures into
the landscape (complete with mature
plantings), maintaining the separate
identity of the sculptures while unify-
ing the public space in low relief. Lins
foundations dont rise more than a
couple of feet above the ground and
are finished on top with stone slabs
that allow for seating. Threshold
stones are laid flush with the earth,
placing text underfoot to relationally
connect with each building. If the
structure was originally domestic, the
text is taken from a diary; if it was a
place of business, the text comes from
a ledger notation. Benson carved the
two business thresholds using an
adapted Basker ville font, while a flow-
ing italic script identifies the domestic
building. Lin chose the written con-
tent to span the centuries of American
life. Part of her sensibility includes
water, and The Meeting Roomfeatures
a water table as its centerpiece. It is a
low, lean, rectangular element of
roughly hewn stone from which water
swells. Benson, who developed a font
that can still be read despite the
roughness of the stone surface, says,
The carved quote and texture of the
stone interweave into a complicated
canvas of text.
A 2010 MacArthur Award recipient,
Benson is a third-generation Newport
calligrapher and stone carver. His
familys business, The John Stevens
Shop, was founded in 1705. The
Bensons previously worked with Lin
on the Vietnam Veterans Memorial,
Top left: Paul McCarthy, Balloon Dog,
2013. Vinyl-coated rubber, 60 x 47
x 20 ft. Above: Fiona Connor, Style
Guide Spa, 2013. Mixed media, dimen -
sions variable. Left: (foreground)
Saint Clair Cemin, Fotini, 2013; (back-
ground) Franz West, Untitled, 2011.
All from Frieze.
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the Civil Rights Memorial, and the
Yale Womens Table. Lin, who
describes her aesthetic interests as
time, memory, and language, uses
The Meeting Roomas an opportunity
to contextualize Bensons accom-
plishments and family legacy.
Lin notes that she has been drawn
at times to extremely under-realized
urban spaces. Queen Anne Square
was just such a space prior to its
transformation. Today, its a peace-
ful, nuanced park where people can
sit back, think, and imagine, feeling
a personal relationship to the citys
past.
Suzanne Volmer
8utWos At sts
Art and Sustainability IV:
Metaphors to Embrace the
World
Praxis International Art Gallery
Art and Sustainability IV curator
Rodrigo Alonso selected his six artists
based on their ability to create
metaphors to embrace the world.
The exhibitions subtitle is extremely
important, because as Alonso
explains, Unlike other professional
spheres, such as architecture or
design, art cannot easily contribute
to the actual material transformation
of the planet. Nonetheless, if any one
thing can be claimed as appropriate
for it throughout history, it is the pos-
sibility to stimulate thought and
reflection on the great problems of
humanity. Artists, as shrewd and ana-
lytical witnesses of their time, have
never ignored these themes, but
rather have tackled them, and tackle
them still, through their specific
tools: symbolism, metaphor, marking
and signaling, poetry.
Joaqun Fargas, an industrial engi-
neer oriented toward technological
art, presented Don Quijote contra
el cambio climtico, a series of wind-
mill-inspired sculptures designed to
power a cooling system placed over
the surface of Argentine Antarctica.
His tongue-in-cheek approach drew
attention to the challenge of preserv-
ing the worlds largest ice reserve
from the effects of global warming.
Technological organisms created as a
new populating species completed
the work. Marina Zerbarini, who spe-
cializes in electronic works, focused
on planetary health through a hyp-
notic cartography of colorful light.
Her thesis: we are responsible for cli-
mate change on earth and its conse-
quences, a responsibility that unites
us all as humans. Romina Orazi, an
active participant in Argentinas inde-
pendent cultural scene who makes
interventions in public space, also
referred to responsibility. Her work
implicated the viewer, who had to
contributeeconomicallyto sup-
port a plants life. The action itself
was perhaps more important than
the plant, calling attention to our
ability to decide the fate of a living
organism. Ana Laura Cantera, an art
professor who initiates scientific and
artistic research projects, presented a
group of dolls made of biodegradable
plastics and banana fiber. She started
this project some time ago in the
Altamira region in Brazil. The dolls,
immersed in the Ro Preto, were
transformed into a network of micro-
bial cells. A circuit of cables and elec-
trodes turned them into interfaces
capable of extracting energy from
the water. Cantera re- created that
sequence in the gallery in order
to show connections between nature
and the city. Hernn Paganini, an art
director and graphic designer, built
a huge organic structure, a living
assemblage, focused on his child-
hood memories of the countryside
he even used elements from the
family house. The provisions stored
inside represented the balance
between natural cycles of abundance
and scarcity. Daniel Fischer, an archi-
tect, freelance curator, and
researcher at the Argentine Society
of Morphological Studies, referred to
the never-ending vital vibrations of
the organic universe, demonstrating
the need to learn how to renew and
respect available resources rather
than exploiting them.
Alonso gathered a group of works
that succeeded in casting light
on the various ways in which we can
Left and detail: Maya Lin, The Meeting
Room, 2013. Permanent public instal-
lation in Queen Anne Square, New -
port, RI. Below left: Ana Laura Can tera,
No eres perenne, 2013. Biodegradable
plastic, microbial cells, plants, and
micro-controllers, dimensions vari-
able. Below: Romina Orazi, Espcimen,
2013. Mixed-media participatory
object, 150 x 90 x 50 cm. Both from
Art and Sustainability.
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relate to our environment. There
was no idealism here; the selec-
tions reflected an intense contrast
of interests that added up to a pow-
erful message. As Alonso says, It is
a matter of thinking of the natural
world as that necessary space,
beloved and problematic, on which,
all the same, the future of the species
continues to depend.
Mara Carolina Baulo
lt IsAWot s, MAs1t Wt qut
Global Caribbean IV: French
West Indies & Guiana
Fondation Clment
Approaching the Fondation Clment,
one was struck by the incongruous-
nessor justiceof a contemporary
Caribbean art exhibition at a former
slave plantation. Yet with the first
step into the foyer, the past ceased to
matter. A vibrant, neon-pink chair,
upholstered in vinyl, appeared to melt
into the floor. Ano (Eddy Firmin)
crafted the amusing Chiklt (i.e.,
chewing gum), with a matching pink
blob like an ottoman. Pay attention,
Ano seemed to tease, this exhibition
may not be what you expect.
Although curator Edouard Duval-
Carri refers to maroon communities
(settlements of escaped slaves) in his
catalogue essay, the work appeared
entirely current and at ease on an
international stage. In Martinican
Christian Bertins Veste blanche sur
capot rouge, a white jacket hangs in
front of a dented red and black car
hood; the effect is urban, not pas-
toral. Mtamorphe, by Ernest Breleur
(also from Martinique), dominated a
large, elegant gallery. Like an inverted
gray volcano fabricated from large
plastic disks, the sculpture intrigued
with its dark mass punctuated by
small red lights. It demanded atten-
tion from any room, like an ash cloud
overshadowing a blue Antillean sky.
The forms of Totem 1, Totem 2, and
Totem 3, by French-trained Martin ican
Louis Laouchez, suggest African tribal
totems, though the detail and seg-
mentation undermine traditionalism.
Guadeloupian Christophe Mert also
crafted totems, his resembling robots
or lean monsters made from scrap
materials. Bruno Pdurands eerie Les
enfants du Pre Labat consists of a cir-
cle of bald, white doll heads, each
crowned by a flag. The circular mirror
beneath them seemingly doubles the
disembodied crowd. The title implies
that we are all descended from Father
Labat, a French clergyman who
recorded important observations
about slave life in Martinique, but
who also owned slaves himself.
Dominican Luz Severino (who works in
Martinique) exhibited Derrire le voile,
a riot of colorful, rubber shoe forms
overflowing from a tall transparent
tower. Behind the veil suggests
something hidden, but the flamboy-
ant colors and quasi-comical texture
of the shoes echo the confident play-
fulness of Anos pink chair.
Thierry Jardins three figurative
abstractionsBigoudia, Boddhi, and
Masqueare constructed of sol-
dered steel; unlike Haitian oil drum
art, however, these sculptures wear
bright, modern painted designs.
Self-taught French artist Laurent
Valre, who works in Martinique,
exhibited three of the most stun-
ning sculptures: small white rub-
bery pigs, cars, and planes arranged
on thickly gessoed wood panels
hanging on the wall. The tight
arrangement of these works evokes
Vik Muiz, but the spare whiteness
is Minimalist, so that rather than
standing back to discover an overall
image, one steps forward to scruti-
nize Bindidon, Le Pouvoir, and A ny
rien comprendre.
Working on a small island has its
challenges, thanks to the relative
paucity of art exhibitions, institu-
tions, and publications. Fortunately,
Fondation Clment provides Carib -
bean sculptors with a world-class
exhibition space. Meanwhile, the
artists of Global Caribbean IV, a
dynamic, forward-facing show, con-
firmed with that theres nothing
insular about their sculptures.
Laura Albritton
tWt ct
55th Venice Biennale
Collateral Events
Ai Weiwei was a strong presence at
the 55th Venice Biennale, all but
dominating the collateral events. You
could leave his exhibitions, but you
couldnt stop thinking about them.
The German pavilion hosted Bang, a
forest of 886 piled-up wooden stools.
These three-legged seats have been
used in China for centuries, though
aluminum and plastic replaced wood
after the Cultural Revolution. An
expanded version of Straight (first
shown at the Hirshhorn Museum in
Washington, DC, in 2012) covered the
floor of the Zuecca Project Space in
the Complesso delle Zitelle. The rebar
lengths that form the installation
150 tons worthwere recovered
from schools destroyed in the 2008
Sichuan earthquake, when more
than 5,000 children died. The school
buildings collapsed because they
were constructed of substandard con-
crete, with no regard for seismic
structural codes. Ai and his team
(who also led efforts to identify the
victims) recovered the crushed rebar,
straightened the pieces, and
arranged them in a wave-like forma-
Above: Ano, Chiklt, 2012. Mixed
media, 28 x 71 x 79 in. Left: Laurent
Valre, Bindidon, 2012. Mixed media
on wood, 39.5 x 39.5 in. Both from
Global Caribbean. Below: Lore Bert,
Art & Knowledge and the 5 Platonic
Solids, 2013. 5 mirrored sculptures,
Japanese paper, and 12 picture
objects, installation at the Biblioteca
Nazionale Marciana, Venice.
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tion that might resemble a peaceful
country landscape, but it is, in fact,
a profoundly affective memorial.
S.A.C.R.E.D., Ais final Venice project,
consisted of six large iron boxes
installed inside the church of
SantAntonin. Each box contained
miniature sculptures re-creating
scenes from his detention in 2012: Ai
being interrogated while sitting on
the lavatory, for instance, or shower-
ing while two guards stand over him.
Other vignettes show him sleeping
and eatingalways in the same tiny
space, always under double guard.
Curator Maurizio Bortolotti explained
that the experience made [Ai] fix all
the details like a nightmare. For 81
days, when not submitting to ques-
tioning, he had nothing to do but
memorize the minutest details of the
tiny, featureless room in which he
was kept. The exteriors of the metal
boxes are entirely blankAi was
brought hooded to his prison.
The Fondazione Querini Stampalia
hosted Jacob Hashimotos Gas Giant,
a large-scale, site-specific installation
conceived to interact with a fourth-
floor space recently redesigned
by Mario Botta. Hashimotos works
always present a vision of beauty in
their colors, rhythms, and gentle
movement, displaying an indefinable,
poetic quality. Though no music
accompanied Gas Giant, it seemed to
follow a precise score. Ten thousand
handmade bamboo and paper kites
covered the ceiling, cascaded down
walls, and took over the floor, coa-
lescing in thick clouds that saturated
the space. The visual complexity led
visitors along a sensorial itinerary in
which the specificities of space-time
coordinates gave way to wonder and
amazement.
Pedro Cabrita Reiss A remote whis-
per filled every room of the Palazzo
Falieris piano nobile. Using materials
completely at odds with the architec-
ture of the building, which was built
and adapted from the 14th through
the 17th centuries, Reis created a
new interior out of aluminum tubes,
fluorescent lights, and electrical
cables, as well as fragments from his
studio, parts of earlier works, docu-
mentary materials, and photos and
objects found in Venice. This installa-
tion, like all of Reiss work, embodies
the process of making art while con-
juring reminiscences and seemingly
banal, ordinary experiences. A visual
or literary randomness suggests that
each work is an ongoing inventory of
the world and a model for its per-
ception. Reiss practice has always
sought to create a strong relation
between artwork, space, and viewer;
at Palazzo Falieri, the emphasis was
on his inclination to blend exhibition
and workspace. A remote whisper
was amazingly successfulviewers
forgot about the old Venetian palazzo
and felt themselves in a new space.
Lore Berts Art & Knowledge and the
5 Platonic Solids at the Biblioteca
Nazionale Marciana offered a perfect
interaction between contemporary
artwork and Renaissance space,
Jacopo Sansovinos Salone. The title
refers to a constant in Berts work: the
dialogue between the fine arts and
philosophy, literature, mathematics,
and astronomy. The 5 Platonic
Solidsfive regular polyhedrons rep-
resenting the five elementswere
installed in the center of the Salone,
integrated into an ocean of folded
white paper. The mirrored sculptures
reflected the room and created a
visual link to the Salones architecture
and decorative program. This link was
spiritual as well as physical, connect-
ing to the history and culture of
Venice: just as the mirrors reflected
the room, Berts subject matter
echoed its iconographyinstalled in
the Salones elaborate paneling, paint-
ings by Veronese and Tintoretto,
among other masters, reinforce the
library as a place of knowledge and
contemplation. Bert installed 12 other
works around the 5 Platonic Solids,
referencing Venetian architectural
motifs, Kants Transcendental
Aesthetics, the poetry of Rainer Maria
Rilke, and Dantes Divine Comedy.
Berts work pays homage to human
achievement, warning us not to lose
sight of past insights and victories.
Laura Tansini
Left and detail: Ai Weiwei, S.A.C.R.E.D,
201113. Fiberglass and iron, 6
elements, 377 x 198 x 153 cm. each.
Installation at the Chiesa di Sant
Antonin. Above: Pedro Cabrita Reis, A
remote whisper, 2013. Mixed media,
detail of installation at the Palazzo
Falieri. Below: Jacob Hashimoto, Gas
Giant, 2013. Bamboo, paper, Dacron,
and acrylic, installation at the Fonda -
zione Querini Stampalia.
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THE 2013 LI FETI ME ACHI EVEMENT AWARD GALA
The International Sculpture Center presented its 22nd annual
Lifetime Achievement in Contemporary Sculpture Award to Nancy
Holt and Beverly Pepper on October 3, 2013. Artists, patrons,
friends, and colleagues joined the ISCs Board of Trustees to honor
the artists at the Tribeca Three-Sixty in New York City.
Speakers Ben Tufnell, who represents Nancy Holts work through
his Parafin project, and Joseph Becherer, Director and Curator of
Sculpture at Frederik Meijer Gardens and Sculpture Park who has
worked numerous times with Beverly Pepper, provided guests
with both art historical and personal perspectives on the guests
of honor. Tufnell and Becherer explored significant themes in the
artists work while offering personal, often humorous anecdotes
and a sincere appreciation of their accomplishments. Although
the speakers remarks were necessarily brief, it was evident that
there was much to be said about Holt and Peppers achievements
over the course of their long careers, and their enduring influence
in the art world.
As Nancy Holt accepted her award, she thanked her many
friends and supporters in the audience, saying: Working on the
fringes of the art world, Ive needed a lot of support from people
who were willing to see outside of the general construction of the
art world. We had to investigate and invent new ways of doing
things. The people who have supported and helped me over the
years entered into an unknown area where we had to feel our
way, and that took an extra amount of vision and support. Holt
also thanked the ISC for its consistent support and said that the
organization has been playing a role in my life, right along with
her other supporters: They do give a firm support to the endeavor
of sculpture.
Beverly Pepper, who traveled from Todi, Italy, to New York
to receive her award, was visibly moved by the experience, saying,
I would like to tell you how overwhelmed I am, and how moved I
am, to see so many friends over so many decades. It was worth liv-
ing to be this age. Its amazing to look out here and see my history.
Thanking Becherer for his comprehensive history of her career,
from design student to painter to sculptor, Pepper also underscored
her continued commitment to working in sculpture.
Family, friends, and admirers surrounded both honorees for the
intimate, candlelit celebration. The evening closed with smiles and
congratulations as guests gathered around the artists to offer per-
sonal congratulations on their work and their receipt of the Lifetime
Achievement Award.
80 Sculpture 33.1
isc PEOPLE, PLACES, AND EVENTS
Vol. 33, No. 1 2013. Sculpture (ISSN 0889-728X) is published monthly, except February and August, by the International Sculpture Center. Editorial office: 1633 Connecticut Ave. NW, 4th floor, Washington, DC
20009. ISC Membership and Subscription office: 19 Fairgrounds Rd., Suite B, Hamilton, NJ 08619, U.S.A. Tel. 609.689.1051. Fax 609.689.1061. E-mail <isc@sculpture.org>. Annual membership dues are US
$100; subscription only, US $55. (For subscriptions or memberships outside the U.S., Canada, and Mexico add US $20, includes airmail delivery.) Permission is required for any reproduction. Sculpture is not
responsible for unsolicited material. Please send an SASE with material requiring return. Opinions expressed and validity of information herein are the responsibility of the author, not the ISC. Advertising in
Sculpture is not an indication of endorsement by the ISC, and the ISC disclaims liability for any claims made by advertisers and for images reproduced by advertisers. Periodicals postage paid at Washington, DC,
and additional mailing offices. Postmaster: Send change of address to International Sculpture Center, 19 Fairgrounds Rd., Suite B, Hamilton, NJ 08619, U.S.A. U.S. newsstand distribution by CMG, Inc.,
250 W. 55th Street, New York, NY 10019, U.S.A. Tel. 866.473.4800. Fax 858.677.3235.
1
Doris Fisher, Beverly Pepper,
and Bill Fisher
2
Andrew Rogers,
Nancy Holt, Diane Karp, and
Alena Williams
3
SawTeen See
and Leslie Robertson
4
Johannah
Hutchison, Jack Becker, and
Lester Katz
5
Hikmet Loe, Susan
Sayre Batton, and Elizabeth
Mazza
6
J. Seward Johnson,
Chair Emeritus.
1 2
3 4
5 6
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____________
a. r. t . r esear ch ent er pr i ses
T H E F I NE AR T F OU NDR Y
717.290.1303
www. t hi nks cul pt ur e. com
For estimates and project inquiries
contact Becky at beckyault@thinksculpture.com
or Tracy at execassist@thinksculpture.com
Tradi ng hours: 8:00 am to 4:30 pm
I y e ng a r
Ar t i s t : Ro b e r t Eng ma n
Hi g h Po l i s h e d S t a i nl e s s S t e e l
Pa t i na & Hi g h Po l i s h e d Br o nz e s
a s s e e n a t t h e Ch i c a g o Na v y Pi e r
sculpture
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