Sculpture

sculpture
May 2014
Vol. 33 No. 4
A publication of the
International Sculpture Center
www.sculpture.org
Mark Manders
Carolee Schneemann
Matthew Barney
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Theres always something to celebrate. This year, I am celebrating a decade with the ISC. It sounds like a long time, but as the saying
goes, time flies when youre having fun. A lot has happened during the last 10 years: new ideas, changing technologies and landscapes,
and some things have come full circle.
My very first experience with our members, and my first true experience of what the ISC was really about, was at a conference
in New Orleans. I had only been with the organization a couple of weeks and really did not know what to expect; I was just excited
about my new position and the opportunity to meet the people we served. It was an amazing experience on many levels. During that
trip, I realized the challenges that lay ahead, but I was not deterred, quite the opposite, I was completely hooked. I knew that I was
with the ISC for the long haul.
This year brings an opportunity to return to New Orleans and discover first hand the impact that art can have on rebuilding a com-
munity. On a visit last year, I was amazed at the changes I saw. NOLA is a different place post-Katrina, and the arts have played a pivotal
role in that transformation. I hope that you will be able to join us there in October; more information is available at <www.sculpture.
org> and on page 63 of this issue.
Another opportunity to join us and celebrate is our upcoming gala celebrating the work of Judy Pfaff and Ursula von Rydingsvard.
More details can be found on page 13. If you cant attend either event, it doesnt mean you cant celebrate. Celebrate the community
that you are part of, connect through an ISConnects event, a local chapter (see page 80 for more details on ISC Chapters), read our
blog, join as a member, or get a friend to join or subscribe to Sculpture. There are lots of great opportunities and events coming up,
as well as new initiatives that will be launched this year. To find out more and stay in the loop, visit <www.sculpture.org> and join
our mailing list.
Johannah Hutchison
ISC Executive Director
From the Executive Director
4 Sculpture 33.4
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
Judy Pfaff
Arnaldo Pomodoro
Gi Pomodoro
Robert Rauschenberg
George Rickey
Ursula von Rydingsvard
George Segal
Kenneth Snelson
Frank Stella
William Tucker
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Departments
16 Itinerary
20 Commissions
22 Forum: Berlin by Ana Finel Honigman
80 ISC News
Reviews
68 New York: Lynda Benglis
69 San Francisco: Fujiko Nakaya
70 Washington, DC: Sam Scharf
71 Concord, Massachusetts: Michio Ihara
72 Garrison, New York: Lorrie Fredette
72 New York: Emil Lukas
73 Cincinnati: Ana England and Steven Finke
74 Pittsburgh: Detroit: Artists in Residence
75 York, Pennsylvania: Andi Steele and Carol Prusa
76 Memphis: Terri Phillips
77 Seattle: Joseph McDonnell
78 London: Emma Hart
79 Istanbul: Kalliopi Lemos
On the Cover: Mark Manders, Still Life with
Books, Table and Fake Newspaper, 2010.
Wood, epoxy, canvas, iron, paint, and offset
print on paper, 247 x 170 x 100 cm. Photo:
Brian Forrest, Courtesy Zeno X Gallery.
Features
24 Mind, Body, and Language: A Conversation with Mark Manders by Robert Preece
30 The Drama of Proportion: A Conversation with Matthew Barney by Joshua Reiman
38 Carolee Schneemann: The Persistence of Her Memory by Joyce Beckenstein
46 Paul McCarthy: Rotten to the Core by Michal Amy
52 Finding Love: A Conversation with Yayoi Kusama by Jan Garden Castro
54 Seward Johnson: The Publics Sculpture by David Furchgott
sculpture
May 2014
Vol. 33 No. 4
A publication of the
International Sculpture Center
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Sculpture May 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).
Benefactors Circle ($100,000+)
Atlantic Foundation
Fletcher Benton
Karen & Robert Duncan
Mrs. Donald Fisher
Grounds For Sculpture
John Henry
Richard Hunt
J. Seward Johnson, Jr.
Johnson Art & Education Foundation
Ree & Jun Kaneko
Joshua S. Kanter
Kanter Family Foundation
Gertrud & Heinz Kohler-Aeschlimann
Marc LeBaron
Lincoln Industries
National Endowment for the Arts
New Jersey State Council on the Arts
Mary OShaughnessy
I.A. OShaughnessy Foundation
Estate of John A. Renna
Jon & Mary Shirley Foundation
Dr. & Mrs. Robert Slotkin
Boaz Vaadia
Bernar Venet
Chairmans Circle ($10,00049,999)
Magdalena Abakanowicz
Anonymous Foundation
Janet Blocker
Blue Star Contemporary Art Center
Fernando Botero
Debra Cafaro & Terrance Livingston
Sir Anthony Caro
Chelsea College of Art & Design
Chicago Arts District/Podmajersky, Inc.
Clinton Family Fund
Richard Cohen
Linda & Daniel Cooperman
David Diamond
Jarvis & Constance Doctorow Family Foundation
Geraldine R. Dodge Foundation
Lin Emery
Fred Eychaner
Carole Feuerman
Bill FitzGibbons
James Geier
Alan Gibbs
Gibbs Farm
Michael & Francie Gordon
Ralfonso Gschwend
David Handley
Carla Hanzal
Richard Heinrich
Daniel A. Henderson
Michelle Hobart
Peter C. Hobart
Joyce & Seward Johnson Foundation
KANEKO
Mary Ann Keeler
Keeler Foundation
Phillip King
William King
Anne Kohs Associates
Nicola J. and Nanci J. Lanni Fund
Cynthia Madden Leitner/Museum of Outdoor Arts
Toby D. Lewis Philanthropic Fund
Marlene & Sandy Louchheim
Patricia Meadows
Creighton Michael
Deedee Morrison
Barrie Mowatt
Manuel Neri
New Jersey Cultural Trust
Sassona Norton
Ralph OConnor
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Frances & Albert Paley
Stanley & Harriet Rabinowitz
Patricia Renick
Pat Renick Gift Fund
Henry Richardson
Melody Sawyer Richardson
Andrew & Judy Rogers
Russ Rubert
Salt Lake Art Center
Carol L. Sarosik & Shelley Padnos
Doug Schatz
Mary Ellen Scherl
June & Paul Schorr, III
Judith Shea
Armando Silva
Kenneth & Katherine Snelson
STRETCH
Mark di Suvero
Takahisa Suzuki
Aylin Tahincioglu
Cynthia Thompson
Steinunn Thorarinsdottir
Tishman Speyer
Brian Tune
University of Nebraska Medical Center
University of the Arts London
Robert E. Vogele
Philipp von Matt
Ursula von Rydingsvard
Georgia Welles
Elizabeth Erdreich White
Address all editorial correspondence to:
Sculpture
1633 Connecticut Avenue NW, 4th Floor
Washington, DC 20009
Phone: 202.234.0555, fax 202.234.2663
E-mail: gharper@sculpture.org
Sculpture On-Line on the International Sculp-
ture Center Web site:
www.sculpture.org
Advertising information
E-mail <advertising@sculpture.org>
I NT E RNAT I ONAL SCUL PT URE CE NT E R CONT E MPORARY SCUL PT URE CI RCL E
The International Sculpture Center is a 501(c)3 nonprofit organization
that provides programming and services supported by contributions, grants,
sponsorships, and memberships.
The ISC Board of Trustees gratefully acknow ledges the generosity of our
members and donors in our Contemporary Sculpture Circle: those who have
contributed $350 and above.
I NT E RNAT I ONAL S CUL PT URE CE NT E R
Executive Director Johannah Hutchison
Office Manager Denise Jester
Executive Assistant Alyssa Brubaker
Membership Manager Manju Philip
Web Manager Karin Jervert
Conference and Events Coordinator April Moorhouse
Conference and Events Associate Jennifer Galarza
Advertising Services Associate Jeannette Darr
ISC Headquarters
19 Fairgrounds Road, Suite B
Hamilton, New Jersey 08619
Phone: 609.689.1051, fax 609.689.1061
E-mail: isc@sculpture.org
Major Donors ($50,00099,999)
Anonymous Foundation
Chakaia Booker
Erik & Michele Christiansen
Terry & Robert Edwards
Rob Fisher
Robert Mangold
Marlborough Gallery
Fred & Lena Meijer
Frederik Meijer Gardens & Sculpture Park
Pew Charitable Trust
Arnaldo Pomodoro
Walter Schatz
William Tucker
Nadine Witkin, Estate of Isaac Witkin
Mary & John Young
isc
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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
a place for encouragement and opportunity.
Membership
ISC membership includes subscriptions to Sculpture and Insider; access to Inter-
national Sculpture Conferences; free registration in Portfolio, the ISCs on-line
sculpture registry; and discounts on publications, supplies, and services.
International Sculpture Conferences
The ISCs International Sculpture Conferences gather sculpture enthusiasts from all
over the world to network and dialogue about technical, aesthetic, and professional
issues.
Sculpture Magazine
Published 10 times per year, Sculpture is dedicated to all forms of contemporary
sculpture. The members edition includes the Insider newsletter, which contains timely
information on professional opportunities for sculptors, as well as a list of recent public
art commissions and announcements of members accomplishments.
www.sculpture.org
The ISCs award-winning Web site <www.sculpture.org> is the most comprehensive
resource for information on sculpture. It features Portfolio, an on-line slide registry
and referral system providing detailed information about artists and their work to
buyers and exhibitors; the Sculpture Parks and Gardens Directory, with listings of
over 250 outdoor sculpture destinations; Opportunities, a membership service with
commissions, jobs, and other professional listings; plus the ISC newsletter and
extensive information about the world of sculpture.
Education Programs and Special Events
ISC programs include the Outstanding Sculpture Educator Award, the Outstanding
Student Achievement in Contemporary Sculpture Awards, and the Lifetime
Achieve ment Award in Contemporary Sculpture and gala. Other special events
include opportunities for viewing art and for meeting colleagues in the field.
Directors Circle ($5,0009,999)
This project is supported
in part by an award from
the National Endowment
for the Arts.
This program is made possible in
part by funds from the New Jersey
State Council on the Arts/Department
of State, a Partner Agency of the
National Endowment for the Arts.
New Jersey Cultural Trust
Ruth AbernethyRobert AbramsLinda Ackley-EakerJohn AdduciOsman
AkanNicole AllenSusan AmordeEl AnatsuiPorter ArneillMichael
AurbachFrank Owusu BaidooWilliam Baran-MickleLianne BarnesBill
BarrettBrooke BarrieJerry Ross BarrishCarlos BasantaGhada Batrouni
John BaunAnne BaxterBruce BeasleyHanneke & Fred BeaumontJoseph
BechererRaine BedsoleEdward BenaventeJoseph BeneveniaRonald
BermanHenri BertrandMicajah BienvenuRita BlittChristian BoltChris
BoothKuBOGilbert V. BoroGreg BrandDee BriggsJudith BritainMolton
BrownHannes BrunnerWalter BruszewskiHal BucknerKeith BushMary
Pat ByrnePattie ByronChristopher CarterWesley CaseyKati Casida
Francisca CastanoCosimo CavallaroVincent Champion-ErcoliAsherah
CinnamonJonathan ClowesFuller Cowles & Constance MayeronAndy
CunninghamAnne CurryAmir DaghighRene Dayan-WhiteheadPaul A.
DeansHilde DeBruyneJohn DenningThomas DevaneyMark Dickson
Albert DicruttaloArt Di LellaKonstantin DimopoulosKenneth Dipaola
Linda Donna DodsonLim Dong-LakDorit DornierMissy DouglasPhilip S.
DrillLouise DurocherHerb EatonCharles EisemannJorge ElizondoRand
Elliott/Elliott & Associates ArchitectsKen EmerickJohn W. EvansPhilip John
EvettJohann FeilacherHelaman FergusonJon FernansVirginio Ferrari
Pattie FirestoneTalley FisherJeff FlemingDustine FolwarcznyBasil C.
FrankDan FreemanRusty FreemanJames GallucciWilliam Gaylord
Vladimir GaynutdinovAristotle GeorgiadesBeatriz GerensteinJames
GersonJames S. GibsonHelgi GislasonJoe GittermanDeWitt Godfrey
Andrew GoerlitzCarol Brown GoldbergYuebin GongJohn GrandeFrancis
GreenburgerBarbara GrygutisSimon GudgeonRoger HalliganWataru
HamasakaCarol HammanJens Ingvard HansenSteve HardySally Hepler
Alessandra Marchitelli HessRenee HintzRoland HockettBernard Hosey
Jack Howard-PotterRobert HuffKen HustonYoshitada IharaEve Ingalls
Angelique JacksonSuzanne JanssenSophie JerramJulia JitkoffDr. Stephen
JoffeCaroline JonesEric JorgensonNathan JosephRay KatzCornelia
KavanaghMaureen KellyRobert E. KellyLita KelmensonChippie Kennedy
Colin KerriganJoanne KimHitoshi KimuraKrasl Art CenterBernard
KlevickasFrederic KlingelhoferGrace KnowltonMako KratohvilJon
KrawczykHeidi KreitchetLynn E. La CountWon LeeDavid R LeedsMichael
Le GrandBoruch LevEvan LewisJohn R. LightDong-Rak LimMarvin
LipofskyOleg LobykinThomas LollarRobert LonghurstSharon Loper
Charles LovingWinifred LutzMark LymanLynden Sculpture GardenRoger
MachinThea MackerNoriaki MaedaAndrea MalaerTorild Storvik
MalmedalEdward MayerIsabel McCallJennifer McCandlessMike
McCarthyTom McCormickSam McKinneyBarbara Jo McLaughlinDarcy
MeekerBenedetto MegideshRon MehlmanJuergen MeierNigel
MessengerMac MetzGina MichaelsCarol Mickett & Robert Stackhouse
Ruth Aizuss MigdalJerry MintonJudith ModrakBrian Monaghan
Jean-Pierre MorinAiko MoriokaKeld MoseholmW.W. MuellerAnna Murch
Morley MyersArnold NadlerCamila NagataMarina NashNathan Manilow
Sculpture ParkHenry NelsonJames NickelDonald NoonSamuel Olou
Joseph OConnellCaoimhghin O FraithileMichelle OMichaelLeo Osborne
Michelle OsborneRalph PaquinJames ParrettMark PattersonDonna
PaytonCarol PeligianBeverly PepperJoel PerlmanDirk PetersonBrandon
PierceJean Jacques PorretDaniel PostellonWayne PotratzBev Precious
Nicholas PriceKimberly RadochiaMarcia RaffTanya RagirVicky Randall
Stephen RautenbachDavid ReifJeannette ReinRoger Reutimann
William RichardsonKevin RobbGale Fulton RossMiroslaw RydzakJoe
SackettJulie SaypoffTom ScarffPeter SchifrinAntoinette SchultzeJoyce
Pomeroy SchwartzSculpture by the LakesScott SealeJoseph H. SeipelJoel
ShapsesJerry ShoreSteven SiegelRenato SilvaDebra SilverRonald
SimmerJerry SimmsVanessa L. SmithYvette Kaiser SmithStan Smokler
Sam SpiczkaHoward SpringerMarc StaplesMichael StearnsDavid Stein
Eric SteinEric StephensonCharles StinsonKaren StoddardFisher Stolz
Elizabeth Strong-CuevasPatrick SullivanJozef SumichrastMichael Supera
David SywalskiSandra TalbotKathy TaslitzCordell TaylorRichard Taylor
Rein TriefeldtJoan TruckenbrodMuzaffer TuncaVictor UribeVladimir
VasilchenkoVasko VassilevAles VeselySuzanne ViemeisterJill Viney
Stefan VladescuAndreas Von HueneJulian Voss-AndreaeMartha Walker
Walter WalkerMark WarwickJames WattsRichard WedekindJim Wheeler
Lynn Fawcett WhitingMichael WhitingJohn WiederspanStuart
WilliamsonMark WillcherBen WoitenaJean WolffDeran WrightHolly
WrightBesada YakoubYorkshire Sculpture ParkMinako YoshinoAlbert
YoungLarry YoungGenrich ZafirAnne ZetterbergFeng ZhangDedong
Zheng
Adobe
Anonymous Donor
Dean Arkfeld
Doris H. Arkin
Art Research Enterprises
ASU Bronze Studio
Verina Baxter
Ambassador & Mrs. Alan Blinken
Bollinger Atelier
Tom Bollinger & Kim Nikolaev
Melva Bucksbaum &
Raymond Learsy
Tom Butler
Giancarlo Calicchia
Edouard Duval Carrie
Cause Contemporary Gallery
Cedar Rapids Museum of Art
Chicago Gallery News
Jim & Jane Cohan
The Columbus Museum
Lucas Cowan
Eduardo da Rosa
Henry Davis
Guerra de la Paz
Digital Atelier
Terry Dintenfass, Inc.
Fred Drucker
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Constance & Blair Fensterstock
True Fisher
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Jenny Gibbs
Mr. & Mrs. Stephen Graham
Louise Grunwald
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Haligon Fine Art
Dr. LaRue Harding
Ed Hardy Habit/Hardy LLC
Gail & Wilfred Heilbut
Ursula & Joseph Helman
Olga Hirshhorn
Paul Hubbard
Gloria Kisch
Paul Klein
A. Eugene & Barbara Kohn
Gary Kulak
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Chi-Yu Liang
Lincoln Park Conservatory
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Dayle Mace
Steve Maloney
Eileen & Barry Mandel
Deborah McCormick
Robert E. Meyerhoff &
Rheda Becker
Microsoft Corporation
Millennium Park, Inc.
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Naples Illustrated
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George Neubert
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Olivella, Umbria Olii
International
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Polich Tallix Art Foundry
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Roger Smith Hotel
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Ambassador Nancy H. Rubin
Morley & Jane Safer
Vicki & Roger Sant
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Sculpt Nouveau
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Steinberg Shebairo LLP
Storm King Art Center
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Foundation
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Umbra, Ltd.
Robert M. Kaye & Diane Upright
Frederico Uribe
Steve Vail Fine Arts
Hans Van De Bovenkamp LTD
John & Lynn Vinkemulder
Alex Wagman
Wellington Sculpture Trust
Charles & Barbara Wright
Lisa & Don Zaretsky
Zealandia Sculpture Garden
Professional Circle ($350999)
Ana & Gui Affonso
Anna-Maria & Stephen Kellen
Foundation
Lisa Arnett
Auckland Art Gallery
Patty & Jay Baker Naples Museum
of Art
Kimberly Beider
Belmont Harbor Yacht Club
Sydney & Walda Besthoff
Brick Bay Wines and Sculpture Trail
Otto M. Budig Family Foundation
Canvas Wines
Maureen Cogan
Lisa Colburn
Ric Collier
Connells Bay Sculpture Park
Demeter Fragrance Library
Lina Deng
Christine and Richard Didsbury
Bob Emser
Jan and Trevor Farmer
FreedmanArt
Jo and John Gow
Haunch of Venison
Bryant Hunt
John S. & James L. Knight Foundation
Michael Johnson
Tony Karman
Gallery Kasahara
Joseph Kernisky
Susan Lloyd
Martin Margulies
Merchandise Mart Properties
Jill & Paul Meister
Gerard Meulensteen
Lowell Miller
Michael Miller
Jesus Moroles
Morton Rachofsky Philanthropic Fund of
the Dallas Jewish Community Foundation
Steve & Debbie Mueller
Sharon & Prescott Muir
Museum of Arts & Design
Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago
Nathan Manilow Sculpture Park
National Gallery, London
Kristen Nordahl
Brian Ohno
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Dennis Oppenheim
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Richard Gray Gallery
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School of the Art Institute of Chicago
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Sculpture Community/sculpture.net
Sebastin
Eve & Fred Simon
Lisa & Tom Smith
Duane Stranahan, Jr.
Roselyn Swig
Tate
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The BWF Foundation, Inc.
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University of Cincinnati
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Friends Circle ($1,0002,499)
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Elizabeth Catlett
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Laumeier Sculpture Park
Lostn Foundation
Moore College of Art & Design
National Academy Museum
William R. Padnos
Katerina Paleckova, Angels Chocolate
Janice Perry
Princeton University Art Museum
Rifle Paper Co.
Eric Schieber
Scottsdale Public Art
Kiki Smith
Elisabeth Swanson
Doris & Peter Tilles
Webster University
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Baltimore Museum of Art
Baltimore
Sterling Ruby
Through June 15, 2014
Rubys work alternates between fluid
and static, minimal and expressionis-
tic, pristine and defaced. Using a
range of media, including video, col-
lage, ceramics, and fiber, he explores
the formal qualities of repression and
containment. This exhibition show-
cases his provocative soft sculp-
turesenormous vampiric maws
crafted from red, white, and blue fab-
ric. Immersed in formal codes and
gestures that signal transgression
and transferencephenomena with
social and psychological, physical
and emotional dimensionsthese
alternately disturbing and seductive
works threaten to ingest everything
within reach. Subtle (or not so
subtle) critiques of oppressive power
structures, reductive forms subsume
pernicious dichotomies into singular,
malleable entities that lock individ-
ual impulse and mechanized control,
American domination and decline,
and liberation and repression into a
stalemated embrace.
Web site <www.artbma.org>
Centre for Contemporary Art
Ujazdowski Castle
Warsaw
Martha Rosler
Through May 18, 2014
In Guide for the Perplexed: How to
Succeed in the New Poland, Rosler
brings her particular brand of
sociopolitical activism to a specific
set of problems. Approaching com-
mon concerns through the prism
of everyday life, she has spent more
than 40 years honing a three-part
strategy of exhibitions, critical discus-
sions, and educational programs to
advance feminist, anti-war, and
social/economic interests. Extending
her recent work with Occupy Wall
Street, this new participatory project
centers on dialogues, performances,
and town hall-style public meetings
facilitated by activists, educators,
and expertsall held in and around
kiosks designed by Rosler and Cen-
trala. Topics include Gender, or How
to be a woman in the new Poland;
Housing; Labor; Debt; How to be an
artist in the new Poland; Environ-
ment and Industry; and What should
be placed inside the new Jewish
museum. Programs continue for the
duration of the show, and visitors are
encouraged to post comments and
challenges to the status quo on a
public Democracy Wall.
Web site <www.csw.art.pl>
Grand Palais
Paris
Monumenta 2014: Ilya and Emilia
Kabakov
The Kabakovs finally have a work-
space that rivals their imaginative
vision in scale and ambition, and
they are bringing more than just an
installation to the Grand Palais cav-
ernous, 145,000-square-foot expanse.
Emphasizing experience rather than
form, The Strange City asks visitors to
slow down in your real life, to call
on your emotions, on your senses,
and on your memories. Drawing on
references as diverse as Renaissance
art and architecture, Romanticism,
and modern science, eight distinct
zoneseach a world unto itself
lead visitors through an epic tale
of human aspirations both earthly
and metaphysical. Like all of the
Kabakovs projects, this fantastic
ideal city functions as a manifesta-
tion of social institutions (and other
botched or useless human projects),
as well as a container in which
creativity can take flight. Though the
artists dont believe that art can
influence politics, they firmly main-
tain that it can change the way we
think, we dream, and we act.
Web site <www.monumenta.com>
Guggenheim Bilbao
Bilbao
Ernesto Neto
Neto describes his experiential, sen-
sual installations as representations
of the bodys landscape from within,
encouraging viewers to interact
with and physically engage these
strange environments by feeling,
smelling, and touching, as well as
looking. The Body that Carries Me,
a retrospective developed in close
collaboration with the artist, fea-
tures more than 50 sense-provoking
works from the 1990s to the pre-
sent, many employing his signature
combination of enveloping fabric
chambers and dizzying aromatics and
most reconfigured for Frank Gehrys
wavy, organic spaces. As the shows
six sections move from the ground
to the air, spice-filled stalactites and
gravity-defying crocheted passage-
ways lead to otherworldly aeries of
adventure and wonder. Poetic
worlds of delight, these chambers
itinerary
Left: Sterling Ruby, Double Vampire
14. Bottom left: Martha Rosler, Semi-
otics of the Kitchen. Above: Ilya and
Emilia Kabakov, study for La Coupole.
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are also refuges in which thinking
stops, where, as Neto says, life can
be directly inhaled and the body can
relax into nature.
Web site
<www.guggenheim-bilbao.es>
Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture
Garden
Washington, DC
Santiago Sierra
Sierras radical and poetic statements
focus on economic and power rela-
tions, especially repetitive routines
and the exchange value of labor.
Though critics accuse him of abusing
misery, his socially engaged works
shed a blinding light on accepted
norms of inequality and entitle-
ment. This show focuses on Los
Encargados (Those in Charge), a 2012
collaboration with Jorge Galindo that
harks back to their rebellious student
days. The film documents a guerrilla
action staged along Madrids Gran
Via in which the artists organized a
motorcade of seven black Mercedes
sedans, each topped with an
upended poster of King Juan Carlos
I or one of the countrys six post-
Franco prime ministers. An unmis-
takeable veto of ineffectual govern-
ment policies in the wake of Spains
economic downturn and a gesture of
solidarity with a suffering populace,
the upside-down portraits also make
a pointed allusion to the costly and
controversial official portrait of the
prime minister commissioned at
the height of the crisis. Though the
action plays out in a specific street,
resonating with its historic past, and
addresses a specific Spanish situa-
tion, the message (underscored by a
soundtrack playing Warszawianka,
the Polish workers anthem adopted
by populist movements worldwide) is
universal: the crooks in charge need
watching.
Web site
<http://hirshhorn.si.edu>
Institute of Contemporary Arts
London
Tauba Auerbach
Named for Martin Gardners peren-
nially popular exploration of sym-
metry and asymmetry in culture,
science, and the wider universe,
Auerbachs The New Ambidextrous
Universe moves beyond what we
see to an inquiry of how we see it.
Replacing objects with enigmas, the
large-scale wooden floor sculptures
in her new series bend and warp
materiality into a mirror image of
itself. Like the science on which
theyre based (moving from biology
to cosmology to physics), these
intricate works begin in rational
observation and end in irrational
(and beautiful) mystery, unfolding
into endless creative variations on
a single theme while pushing and
pulling form to the limits of possi-
bility.
Web site <www.ica.org.uk>
Los Angeles County Museum
of Art/Charles White Elementary
School
Los Angeles
Kaz Oshiro
Oshiro is best known for high-fidelity,
full-size replicas of everyday
objectsmicrowaves, dumpsters,
and file cabinets, among other com-
monplace items. Though many of his
works masquerade as readymades,
they are, in fact, deliberate construc-
tions made from little more than can-
vas. By using the materials of paint-
ing to fabricate sculpture, he adds
a new dimension to tromp loeil trick-
ery while further blurring the line
between illusion and reality. As part
of LACMAs ongoing engagement
with the Los Angeles community,
Oshiro has installed this multi-part
exhibition at the museums satellite
gallery in the Charles White Elemen-
tary School. Chasing Ghosts juxta-
poses new works, objects chosen by
the artist from the museums collec-
tion, and a collaborative project cre-
ated in conjunction with students
at the school.
Web site <www.lacma.org>
Above: Ernesto Neto, Forest Skye.
Above right: Santiago Sierra and Jorge
Galindo, Los Encargados. Right: Tauba
Auerbach, The New Ambidextrous Uni-
verse I. Bottom right: Kaz Oshiro,
Dumpster (Yellow with Blue Swoosh).
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Magasin 3 Stockholm Konsthall
Stockholm
Siobhn Hapaska
Otherworldly
Hapaskas immaculately crafted,
smoothly elusive sculptures resonate
with not-quite-graspable implica-
tions. Combining disjointed images,
materials, and narrative fragments,
her ambiguous and charismatic
works seem to tackle life and death,
nature and artifice, and threat and
safety; but they also suffer from cul-
tural amnesia and deny clear read-
ing. Whether executed in slickly syn-
thetic or ruggedly natural materials,
these sculptural puzzles share a
vision of displacement, alluding to
the irreversibility of progress and the
sadness inherent in utopianism. Their
urbanity and obscurantism might
appear as anti-naturalism, but the
anxieties to be kept at bay do not
originate in the natural worldthey
arise, instead, from our restless
yearning for forward momentum, our
fascination with a twisted technologi-
cal sublime, and our desire to escape
beyond the world as we know it.
In Otherworldly, Annika von Hauss-
wolff, Anish Kapoor, Charles Long, Pipi-
lotti Rist, and Per B Sundberg offer
similar riddles directed at perception
as a creative process. Presenting the
strange and unanticipated, their works
reject clear reference in favor of imagi-
native stimula tion, both conscious and
unconscious, conjuring other worlds
of phenomenological possibility
unmediated by theory, history, or pre-
conceived reality.
Web site <www.magasin3.com>
Malm Konsthall
Malm, Sweden
Lars Englund
Straddling Minimalism and Construc-
tivism, Englunds sculptures estab-
lish intricate interactions between
object and surrounding space, as
form expands into an entity without
beginning or end. From his early
experiments in rubber, plastics, car-
bon fiber, and concrete through
more recent works in spring steel,
apparent symmetry is defied by
inconsistencies that skew expected
proportions and allow dynamic
flow. Though partially dematerialized,
his work still gravitates toward
sculptures perennial concernssur-
face, volume, stillness, and move-
mentchanneling these formal ele-
ments into an exploration that
moves beyond the solid to embrace
the void.
Web site
<www.konsthall.malmo.se>
Metropolitan Museum of Art
New York
Jean-Baptiste Carpeaux
Rejecting Baudelaires dismissive
judgment of 19th-century French
sculpture, The Passions of Jean-Bap-
tiste Carpeaux sets out to prove that
such work is anything but boring.
From the sensationalist title to a
press release that raises an excep-
tional talent to the status of a
tormented sculptor, the Met seems
hell-bent on generating a buzz wor-
thy of todays tell-all tabloid mental-
ityviolent mood swings, an abused
wife, darkness, and despair. Over-
wrought framing aside, this exhibi-
tion of 160 works (the first devoted
to the artist in 38 years) still offers
the opportunity for serious critical
reassessment, revealing a versatile
artist of extraordinary stylistic flexib-
lity, a sculptor who could channel
Watteau in ravishing portraits of Sec-
ond Empire celebrities and The Dance
(his pornographic commission
for the Paris Opra) and then veer off
into a Sturm-und-Drang fusion of late
medieval expressionism, Early Renais-
sance realism, and High Renais-
sance/Mannerist anatomical bravura
in the tragic masterpiece Ugolino
and His Sons (the exhibitions market-
ing icon). No run-of-the-mill acade-
mic sculptor, Carpeaux could knock
Rodin off his pedestal as the progeni-
tor of modern sculpture, modern
scandal, and modern angst. But to
call his style shifts extreme (like
aberrant mood swings) belittles their
strategic deployment in conjunction
with subject matter. Such decisions
reveal more than a string of manic-
depressive episodes in a troubled life,
though the separation of work and
biography wouldnt sell as well.
Web site <www.metmuseum.org>
Metropolitan Museum of Art
New York
Lucas Samaras
A compulsively productive sculptor,
photographer, painter, filmmaker,
and writer, Samaras is a performer
at heart (he entered the New York
scene as a participant in the Hap-
penings orchestrated by Allan
Kaprow, Robert Whitman, and Claes
Oldenburg). Since the late 1950s,
he has enacted himself as subject,
using self-representation to tap a
bottomless Pandoras box of taboos,
from sexuality and terror to trans-
formation and mortality. Offerings
from a Restless Soul, which
includes more than 60 works in an
installation designed in part by
Above: Lars Englund, Borderline. Left: Siobhn Hapaska, view of installa-
tion. Center left: Charles Long, Untitled, from Otherworldly. Bottom left:
Jean-Baptiste Carpeaux, Ugolino and His Sons (detail).
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Samaras, offers a complete (and
sometimes embarrassing) portrait
of the artist, from innovative photo-
graphic experiments and recent
computer- generated imagery to his
mixed-media boxes. These colorfully
painted and encrusted Freudian
constructions conceal a plethora of
mundane and exotic objects (beads,
pins, shells, mirrors, and stuffed
birds) in their tiny compartments and
hidden drawerstalismanic ingredi-
ents holding the key to a richly com-
plex psychic world.
Web site <www.metmuseum.org>
Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth
Fort Worth
Rirkrit Tiravanija
In the mid-90s, Tiravanijas work
became synonymous with Nicolas
Bourriauds relational aesthetics,
which emphasizes the social role and
function of art, how it influences,
and is influenced by, interpersonal
communication and interactions in
the public sphere. Cooking Thai food
(his grandmother was a TV chef),
serving it to visitors, and providing
written recipes as wall texts became
his primary method to bring people
together and influence human
interaction. Later projects, including
constructed environments in which
guests can read or listen to music
and T-shirt factories, expand on this
concept, continually reducing
the distance between artwork and
viewer. With their emphasis on
everyday, communal actions, such
initiatives recall Beuyss social sculp-
ture and subscribe to the same
belief in arts transformative poten-
tial, though of late, Tiravanija has
directed these exchanges more
overtly: recent worksfear eats the
soul, police the police, and who if
not we should at least try to imagine
the future, againtake a firm
stance on recent events and point
catalytic action in a clear direction.
Web site <www.themodern.org>
Muse dArt Modern (MUDAM)
Luxembourg
Lee Bul
Lee approaches the human form not
just as individual body, but also
as social entity. Expanding the idea
of the physical, her work embraces
new technologies and redraws the
frontiers of human existence. Mon-
sters and cyborgs conflate reality,
science, and fiction, deliberately
leaving their borders open to inter-
pretation. Her recent sculptures
and installations have become more
ambitious in scope, exploring a
global history of humanity in which
recognizable human form is replaced
by human products and achieve-
ments. This quasi-retrospective
including a new site-specific instal-
lationreveals a progressively
expansive vision that now spreads
to encompass transfigurations of
the built environment and spatial
perception. Within these sensuous
and darkly seductive spaces of glit-
tering ruin, human desire and ambi-
tion give rise to a realm of disinte-
grating utopian aspirations.
Web site <www.mudam.lu>
Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen
Rotterdam
Alexandra Bircken
Originally trained in fashion at Cen-
tral Saint Martins College of Art and
Design in London, Bircken retains a
designers sensibility in her appreci-
ation of tactile qualities and her
associative abilities. Taking a sensu-
ous and eclectic approach to mate-
rials, she creates what might in
other hands be dissonant combina-
tions of branches, stones, wool,
hair, tights, and found objectsall
coalescing in hybrid assemblages
that diffuse the singular object into
a network of clustered relationships
and interactions. The individual
sculptural points themselves subvert
expectations, playing with stereo-
typical dichotomies (male versus
female, artisanal versus mechani-
cal, hard versus soft, minimal versus
ornamental), categories of object
(motorcycle, horse, human body),
and the symbolisms assigned to
those objects.
Web site <www.boijmans.nl>
Left: Rirkrit Tiravanija, untitled 2011
(police the police). Below left: Lee
Bul, Souterrain. Right: Lucas Samaras,
Untitled (Spoon). Bottom right:
Alexandra Bircken, Scheibentorso.
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Zagarayuschiy Zayats (Sunbathing Hare)
St. Petersburg, Russia
Florentijn Hofmanbest known for giant rubber ducky inflatables that have
been touring the world for more than five years (and were recently a huge hit
in East Asia)has a special affinity for creating large, playful sculptures of
everyday objects. Such works, he says, give people a break from their daily
routines.
Last summer on St. Petersburgs Zayachy Island (Hare Island), Hofman
installed a 15-meter-long sculpture of a smiling toy hare, which looked like a
giant toddler had carelessly dropped it on the ground. Constructed from pieces
of plywood, Zagarayuschiy Zayats (Sunbathing Hare),
which doubled as a playground and photo op, was
installed for a few weeks last fall as part of Russia-
Netherlands 2013, a celebration of bilateral relations
between the two countries. In Russia, there is no con-
temporary art in public space, the Dutch artist
explains, and locals accustomed to bronze sculptures
of politicians and rulers were drawn to his unusual
project.
Zagarayuschiy Zayats was sited near the Peter and
Paul Fortress, the original citadel of the city founded
by Peter the Great in 1703. Spanning most of Zayachy
Island, the historic fortress once housed a prison where
the Decembrists, Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Leon Trotsky,
and Josip Broz Tito were incarcerated. At the center of
the structure stands Peter and Paul Cathedral, the old-
est church in the city and burial place of the Russian
tsars. After the Russian Revolution, most of the fortress
became a museum, as it remains to this day, attracting
tourists and natives alike to Zayachy Island. Hofman
notes that residents 65 years and older hang around
on Hare Island to sunbathe whenever the sun strikes St.
Petersburg [in] early spring until late autumn. He likes
to think of Zagarayuschiy Zayats as having contributed
a sculptural rhyme to Zayachy Island and its sun-
bathing elders.
0Avtu 6knv
fuckoff
Prague
In the lead-up to the Czech parliamentary elections
last October, President Milos Zeman woke up one
morning to find a 30-foot-tall, purple hand giving him
the finger from the middle of the Vltava River. Point-
ed at Prague Castle (the presidents residence), fuckoff
was the unmistakable work of the citys most prolific
artist, David Cerny.
Famous for his provocative and often politically
charged public works, Cerny made a name for himself
in 1991 when he covered Pragues Monument to Soviet
Tank Crews in pink paint. In a 2013 interview with
Vice, Cerny recalled that about 16 years ago [Zeman,
then a member of parliament], said I should be in
prison after the pink tank incident. Cerny, however,
was unhappy with the president for more than just
personal reasons.
After a corruption scandal led to Prime Minister Petr
Necass resignation last July, Zemans new appointee
gained a no confidence vote, parliament dissolved, and
new elections were announced. Cerny saw all this as
Zemans scheme to gain power in parliament through a
20 Sculpture 33.4
commissions commissions
Below and detail: Florentijn Hofman, Zagarayuschiy Zayats (Sunbathing Hare), 2013.
Plywood and paint, 15 x 8 x 2.5 meters.
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new governing coalition that would include the Com-
munists, a party that was once again gaining influence.
This finger is aimed straight at castle politics, Cerny
told the New York Times in October, After 23 years, I
am horrified at the prospect of the Communists return-
ing to power and of Mr. Zeman helping them to do so.
(Cerny painted fuckoff specifically in purple, because
the color is free from political party associations.)
After the ballots were counted, Cernys fears of a
Communist return were averted; two other parties led
the new coalition. Cerny took fuckoff back to his
studio after about a week. (The local nautical authority
had authorized the sculpture, and the president tact-
fully never ordered it removed.) I wanted to wake
people up, Cerny told Metro World News after the
elections, and [fuckoff] was a message to the presi-
dent and those post-Communist assholes trying to take
the country back to Moscow.
0Avtu 8kukWtt
Alien
London
I have always been fascinated by the idea that we are
not alone, that a massive alien might suddenly land on
earth, says London-based David Breuer-Weil. I want-
ed to capture the sense of wonder and shock that such
an arrival would generate. Alien fulfills that ambition,
looking like it just crash-landed headfirst into
Grosvenor Gardens, only blocks away from Bucking-
ham Palace. Measuring six meters tall, the bronze figure
has strikingly human characteristics. I have this idea that extra-terrestrials are
completely human, Breuer-Weil explains, maybe just different in scale.
Scaled up from a hand-modeled clay maquette covered with fingerprints,
Alien appears as though it had been sculpted by a giant. In addition to the
imprints, the surface of the sculpture bears doodles and musings, including
the name of the artists grandfather, Ernst Breuer-Weil, who inspired the work:
My grandfather was a refugee from Vienna and fled after the Nazis took over
in 1938. He landed in England very suddenly [and]was labeled an Enemy
Alien when he arrived here. He always discussed the tragedy of being consid-
ered an alien in his new home.
Alien shares its garden space with a statue of Marshal Ferdinand Foch, who
dismissed the Treaty of Versailles as too lenient, saying in 1919, This is not a
peace. It is an armistice for 20 years. Breuer-Weil, in light of his family history,
considers Alien particularly apt in his company. He adds, Every work of art
should be like an alien landing, something sudden and unexpected. As much
a reference to immigration and displacement as a science fiction oddity, Alien
will remain at Grosvenor Gardens through April 2015.
Elena Goukassian
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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>.
Above: David Cerny, fuckoff, 2013. Mixed media, 30 ft. tall. Below, left and right: David
Breuer-Weil, Alien, 2013. Bronze, 6 meters high.
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____________
Berlin is well into its second
decade as a hub for vanguard
artists and experimental exhibi-
tions. The consensus among
self-identified Berliners is that
the city is todays equivalent of
Manhattan in the 80s, London
in the 90s, and Paris in the
50s. It is an affordable, forgiv-
ing, and intellectually hungry
ecosystem for making art and
being an artist. Encroaching
gentrification has yet to squelch
home-grown creativity, and
expats are eager to take root in
a city with exceptional available
space and receptive audiences.
For these reasons, young artists
flock here, and established
artists such as John Isaacs,
Doug las Gordon, Slater Bradley,
Phil Collins, Olafur Eliasson,
and Tacita Dean have long-run-
ning working studios in Berlin.
In other cities, such significant
figures are isolated by income
and time pressures, but here,
they are easily approached by
students and emerging artists
seeking internships and men-
tors. The quality of opportunity,
as well as of life in Berlin, still
surpasses that of other major
art environments.
Still, Berlin is not immune to
cultural shifts, and it is notice-
ably transitioning from a post-
grad utopia into a more mone-
tized environment. In September
2012, Kunst haus Tacheles, the
9,000-square-meter Mitte art-
hive and sculpture park, closed
after the resident artists collec-
tive lost a 22-year squatters
rights fight. Although Tacheles
was best known for outsider
artists and renegade gatherings,
it symbolized Berlins uncon-
strained creative sensibility. For
locals, its closing signified a
shift toward a more convention-
al system for art production and
reception. Berlins new emblem-
atic art space is a branch of
Londons Blain|Southern Gal -
lery, which opened its 1,300-
square-meter Potsdamer Strasse
space in the renovated Der
Tagesspiegel building with an
exhibition of site-specific sculp-
ture by YBA artists Tim Noble
and Sue Webster.
These changes signify Berlins
maturation, along with its
recognition that its financial sit-
uationdefined by avid audi-
ences but few local collectors
is untenable. Although art is
not bought as often in Berlin as
London, some of the citys lead-
ing institutions showcase pri-
vate collections. The 1,300-
square-meter me Collec tors
Room, which opened in May
2010, houses Thomas Olbrichts
collection of art from the Renais -
sance to the present and offers
space for other high-profile col-
lectors to share their tastes with
the city. Christian Boross col-
lection, which includes works
by Santiago Sierra, Ai Weiwei,
and hundreds of others, is per-
manently on view in a reno-
vated 1943 structure originally
built as a Nazi air raid shelter.
Apart from personal collec-
tions, some of the most fiscal-
proof spaces have outposts
elsewhere and use Berlin as a
vibrant project space for work
in mediums that are inherently
ephemeral or unlikely to sell
22 Sculpture 33.4
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Left: Zhivago Duncan, Pretentious Crap,
201011. Wood, glass, and mixed
media, 300 x 307 x 250 cm. Below:
Michail Pirgelis, When it is called
moment, 2013. Aluminum, titanium,
and lacquer, 260 x 482 x 185 cm.
Berlin: A Vanguard Art Community Grows Up
by Ana Finel Honigman
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well. The spirit of reciprocity
is exemplified by abc Berlin,
an exchange program for inter-
national galleries to promote
individual artists in Berlin. In
its sixth year, abc included 130
galleries that presented 120
site-specific projects. Founded
by the galleries Galerie Guido
W. Baudach, Mehdi Chouakri,
Galerie Kamm, Klosterfelde,
Meyer Riegger, Galerie Neu,
neugerriemschneider, Esther
Schipper, and ak|Branicka,
abc has specialized in outdoor
sculpture and site-specific
work. In 2013, it focused on a
critical engagement with tem-
porary exhibition architecture
through pre-existing and recy-
clable structures.
Sculpture and installation
comfortably occupy galleries
with idiosyncratic interiors.
Heavy industrial metal works,
incorporating multiple found
parts, define a specifically iden-
tifiable Berlin aesthetic. Zhivago
Duncan, Kenno Apatrida, and
Jonathan Meese embody this
manic magpie look. But such
large-scale works have mostly
moved from temporarily appro-
priated industrial spaces into
polished and venerated gal-
leries. Sprth Magerss multi-
tiered Mitte space often houses
large-scale sculptures by such
artists as Michail Pirgelis, Ster -
ling Ruby, and Thea Djordjadze
in its high-ceilinged lower level.
Eduardo Basualdos Teoria
(2013) in the PSM booth at the
Frieze Art Fair was another rep-
resentative of this irreverent and
philosophically liberated sensi-
bility. A giant boulder dangling
from a rope over the empty
booth, the sculpture made salon-
style hangings of high-priced
paintings look over-eager.
This May marks the 10th
anniversary of Berlins Gallery
Weekend, a showcase repre-
senting the citys ethos, eco-
nomic reality, and artistic com-
munity as accurately as Frieze
and the Armory embody
London and New York. Gallery
Weekend began in 2004 as an
agreement among commercial
galleries to simultaneously
stage openings during a two-
night period. Instead of
installing art in novel settings,
the event invites international
collectors to explore the city
and its organic art scene. Fifty
galleries currently contribute,
and international institutions,
including Tate London and the
Centre Pompidou, participate
peripherally. Despite this
impressive institutional pres-
ence, the events allure is its
lack of pretension. It spreads
throughout the city, which still
refuses to develop an art ghetto
similar to Manhattans Chelsea.
Instead, the clusters of galleries
participating in Gallery Week -
end create a block-party atmos-
phere in which potential collec-
tors and masses of native Ber -
liners drift between galleries,
appreciating the best of their
regular roster.
As Alexander Forbes, former
Berlin Bureau Chief for Louise
Blouin Media, sums up, On
the one hand, there has been
a distinct sense of growing up
within the Berlin art scene
over the past few years. The flip
side of this growth, and the
overall economic growth of the
city at large, is that cost of liv-
ing is also quite noticeably
higher than even a couple
years ago, never mind five or
10. For that reason, its probably
slightly less international
when youre sitting at a dinner
than it was a few years before.
But, the expat scene is still
vibrant, and most importantly,
we havent seen the mass exo-
dus of artists to Budapest
or wherever else people were
harping on a year or two ago.
As long as the artists are still
here, Berlin will remain unde-
niably relevant. It is this
sense of community, and its
cohesive sense of exchange
between artists and galleries,
that defines artistic Berlin.
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Top: Thea Djordjadze, view of installation at Documenta 13, 2012. Above: Sterling Ruby, installation view of I am
not free because I can be exploded anytime, at Sprth Magers Berlin, 2011.
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Mark Manders
Mind, Body, and Language
BY ROBERT PREECE
A Conversation with
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Composition with Three New Piles of Sand, 2010. Painted bronze, wood,
iron, rope, sand, and leather, 43 x 45.5 x 131 in. C
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26 Sculpture 33.4
Left: Mind Study, 201011. Wood,
epoxy, ceramic, canvas, paint, and
iron, 170 x 240 x 500 cm. Below left:
Composition with Blue, 2013. Wood,
painted wood, and painted epoxy,
33.4 x 13.5 x 23 cm. Below right: Still
Life with Books, Table and Fake News-
paper, 2010. Wood, epoxy, canvas,
iron, paint, and offset print on paper,
247 x 170 x 100 cm.
Ive often heard that its very difficult to write about my work, Mark Manders told me, but I think my work is very clear. In business
discourse, theres something called the sweet spot, when a product or service is strategically placed in between things and results in
success. Intentionally or not, Manders appears to have done the same in an art context. While attracting widespread interest, his work
has created a framework for varied discussion through a positioning of intuitively constructed visual elements that can be very hard to
place.
Manders has exhibited extensively over the past 20 years, beginning in his native country of the Netherlands and then expanding
across Europe and into the United States. Highlights include his solo presentation at the Dutch Pavilion at the 2013 Venice Biennale,
as well as solo shows at the Dallas Museum of Art (2012), the Hammer Museum, Los Angeles (2010), Kunsthaus Zrich (2009), Kunst -
verein Hannover (2007), BALTIC Centre for Contemporary Art, Gateshead (2006), the Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin (2005), the
Art Institute of Chicago (2003), and the Staatliche Kunsthalle, Baden Baden (1998), among many others.
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Robert Preece: Ive recently been considering
mindfulness, and Ive become much more
aware of the separation of body and mind
through thinking and its physical effects.
So, I was very taken by your essay Why do
we have time to think about our bodies?
which was published in the catalogue for
the traveling exhibition The Absence
of Mark Manders (2007). How are you
depicting the body and the mind in your
installation Mind Study (201011)?
Mark Manders: For me, that work is related
to another work with the same title. I tried
to make a work with just a few wordsa
table, chairs, a figurevery normal words
that are related to each other. Its difficult
to capture it with language.
Although its made with simple words,
its very complex. Its really about balancing,
like a balancing trick. It looks extremely
fragile, but its not. At the same time, its
peaceful but has tension. Im really inter-
ested in how we deal with this work once
its here. Its interesting that its very diffi-
cult to describe this work. In this sense, it
is also an image of the mind, a Mind Study.
RP: When I see Mind Study, I see the sepa-
ration of body and mind in an abstract
way, dealing with the self in relation to the
table, suggesting some sort of group
meeting or group thought, which as we
know is very strong in the Netherlands.
And as others have mentioned, there is a
melancholy element. Would you agree?
MM: Yes. The separation of the body and
the mind is a very complex thing. After
working for so many years, Ive realized
more and more that my work is sort of like
a machine, in the same way that language
is like a machine. Because we have words,
we think in language. We cannot think
without language. Humans can invent
music, religion, or mindfulnessI dont
know exactly what they are, but I think
that theyre a way to try to escape lan-
guage, a way to not think in language.
As humans, we always have to deal with
this language machine. Because I create
a few works and push them further and
further, my work also becomes like a
machine, in a way. I cannot stop, and it
tells me what to do.
RP: So, you made this, you refined and
changed it, and then you decided that you
were done with it. As you were going through this process, were you thinking about how
to balance all of these elements?
MM: In my daily practice, Im working on many projects at once, and all of these works
are growing and changing. Mind Study has a very long history. Its related to Figure with
Three Piles of Sand / Composition with Three New Piles of Sand (2010), which is in the
collection of the Dallas Museum of Art. This work is also like a balancing trick, with three
piles of sand. I take small steps. Im always thinking about the works and making deci-
sions. But the works also follow their own rules.
RP: What about Composition with Blue? Are you referring to the architecture of Gerrit
Rietveld and the paintings of Mondrian?
MM: Composition with Blue would be perfectly placed in the 1920s. Of course, I made it
now, and it couldnt have been made in the 1920s, but it fits exactly. Not just the blue
the whole work is perfect in that period.
RP: Composition with Blue, Composition with Short Verticals (2010), and Working Table
(201213) show an abstracted depiction of the mind. The head is rigidly sliced and put into
an order of other things. I see it as the mind not free, but structured by all of these things.
MM: Im more and more interested in the language of verticals, horizontals, and colors.
In a composition of verticals, if you make one a little shorter or longer, it becomes totally dif-
ferent. So, I tried to make heads as musical chords. Everything fits, though there are lots
of mistakes with these heads, and parts are missing. In a way, they are perfect composi-
tions. For me, the whole composition is a head, not just the figurative part. There is a lot
of tension, but maybe also peace. And I like that the heads look behind youor through
you. They are part of something that you can never reach.
Unfired Clay Figure, 200506. Iron chairs, painted epoxy, wood, and mixed media, 150 x 300 x 225 cm.
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RP: With regard to your analytical position, are you influenced by
certain artists or philosophers?
MM: When I was a teenager, I looked at books on Picasso and Lucas
Cranach that influenced me a lot. In a book on Picassos later work,
what really struck me was that you could see the decision-making
process in his paintingshe did this, and then that. I was really
fascinated. With Cranach, you cannot see his mind making deci-
sions when he is working. There is one image that you cannot
read. What Im doing now is really a combination of these two
things. You always see decisions, like putting this wood there, or
you see my hand in the clay. At the same time, its a clear image
like Cranachs.
In the second year of art school, I decided to stop reading; I
stopped looking at newspapers and stopped watching television.
I did this for a few years. I later had an exhibition in a hospital.
At eight oclock, they all watched TV. I was not used to the news
anymore, so when something terrible happened, I think in Africa,
I was very moved by it. For them, it was strange that the news
touched me so much.
Then I started reading again. Nietzches Thus Spoke Zarathustra
made a big impression on me. I was also impressed by Daniel
Dennett. But I dont have much time to read because I spend so
much time with my work. Its a pity because I really like reading.
RP: So, your essay Why do we have time to think about our bod-
ies? isnt based on anything you read, just on your intuitive way
of putting things together.
MM: Its a kind of poetic text. When I finish a work, I write a short
text. As an artist, I dont think I have to say anything about my
workIm allowed to be an artistbut I think I have to talk about
my work. Im allowed to do what I want to do, and society gives me
the space. I think that its very natural to be open about my work,
but you dont need my texts in combination with my works.
RP: How would you describe the figure in Unfired Clay Figure
(200506) and the other elements in the construction?
MM: The small objects arranged on the floor refer to an earlier
work, a floor plan of a building with three rooms. Then there are
the three chairs and the figure above. In a way, the work relates
to Mind Study. For me, the three rooms, the three chairs, and the
figure are related and like one figure. I wanted to create two moments
in one work. With the two pieces of wood, there are almost two
moments, a way to create time in one piece.
RP: I particularly like Ramble-room chair (2010), probably because
I find it rather mysterious. Could you tell me more about the fig-
ure, depicted as a realistic head and torso ending in a wooden
board, and its positioning in the chair?
MM: Shadow study (2010) also has a piece of wood. I made an
image of a bone around the wood; and on the bone, there is a
shadow from a cup. In Ramble-room chair, there is also an image
made around the piece of wood. Theres a strange thing about
the head and the body, there really isnt a neck. The angle is near
90 degrees. If you stand in front of it, you cannot look at the figures
eyes. Because of this, it has a peaceful and vulnerable quality.
RP: You sometimes remove limbs from your figures. Are they
structurally unnecessary for the form?
28 Sculpture 33.4
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Above: Ramble-room chair, 2010. Wood, painted epoxy, offset print on paper,
and chair, 85 x 180 x 67 cm. Below: Finished sentence, 19982006. Iron,
ceramic, teabags, and offset print on paper; 85 x 336 x 185 cm.
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MM: There are different reasons. In this case, it feels
very natural that the figure is without arms and legs.
In a way, it feels complete. But without arms, the
figure is also extremely vulnerable. It cannot help
itself in this environment. Imagine this figure with arms:
it would be terrible.
RP: If you added arms, youd have to change the whole
piece, wouldnt you?
MM: Yes, it would have to be something totally differ-
ent. I really like how it feels so natural and very com-
plete. The head pieces also feel very complete, even
though there is only one slice of a face there.
RP: How do you see language, particularly with regard
toFinished sentence (19982006)?
MM: This started when I read some of Franz Kafkas sto-
riesI was so jealous of him. When I make a work or an
exhibition, I cannot control what people think or what
they see first. But when you write a book, you can direct
the readers thoughts. So, I wanted to make a work with
real objects, and I wanted to write with objects. I went
to a supermarket to look for the best writing materials.
I decided to try to write a word, though not really a word,
with teabags. I took five teabags and tried to find the
best possible way to arrange them so that they tried to
say something. Later, this group of teabags became part
of a thing called Finished sentence. I attached them to
an iron structure, which kind of looks like a machine or
musical instrument.
RP: You suggested Fox / Mouse / Belt (1992) as one
of the works to discuss in this interview. To what
extent does this work relate to the others, or are you
trying to stress how you test works by installing them
in a supermarket and gauging the reaction?
MM: I imagine that all of my works are tested in super-
markets, and Ive been able to test a few pieces in
them for real. I also imagined Room with Chair and
Factory, which is now at MoMA, at the IKEA in Ghent.
Fox / Mouse / Belt was exhibited simultaneously at
the Dutch pavilion, in a Venice supermarket, and at
MoMA. I really liked that this work, which is an edition
of three, was exhibited in three different places. The
work doesnt care where it is, though the context
changes and the public changes.
RP: Your ongoing self-portrait as a building project,
which features fictional architectural plans, repre-
sents a fictional alter ego named Mark Manders,
who is distinct from the real artist Mark Manders.
Has this fictional artist by any chance been present
in this interview?
MM: Yes, about 20 percent of the time.
Robert Preece is a former Assistant Editor of English
for Specific Purposes: An International Research Jour-
nal, which focuses on language acquisition.
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Above: Fox / Mouse / Belt, 1992. Painted bronze, 15 x 120 x 40 cm. Work installed in the Coop
Via Garibaldi, Venice. Below: Room with Chair and Factory, 200308. Wood, iron, rubber,
polyester, ceramic, canvas, wig, chair, paint, and offset print on paper, 318 x 240 x 405 cm.
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The Drama of
Proportion
Rouge Battery, 2014. Cast copper and cast iron, work in progress.
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A Conversation with
BY JOSHUA REIMAN
Matthew
Barney
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Joshua Reiman: Sculpture deals with the physical, a spatial arena
taken up by objects that we have to deal withreal objects in real
space, a distinctive kind of viewing experience. Cinematic experiences,
on the other hand, take us away from the everyday, and performance is
ethereal and of the moment. Considering all of the choices for artistic
output, you always seem to gravitate toward the use of sculpture as a
physical statement in your work. What is it about the physical object
that is so important to you?
Matthew Barney: An object has the abilityin its aloofness, in its pres-
enceto hold a lot of meaning. You can invest meaning into an object
willfully, or it can have its own meaning in terms of its materiality. But
how that meaning is revealedslowly, in terms of encountering the
object, moving around the objectis a process which is quite cinematic.
I tend not to separate these things so much. The cinematic and the
sculptural are quite close, and I am psychologically much more com-
fortable with that than I am with the pictorial. I am a story-
teller by nature, and the types of stories that I am interested
in, or the rate at which the narrative is revealed, relate to
what we are talking about, to the way an object reveals its
meaning.
JR: Do materials have a hierarchy for you?
MB: Yes, and this project is a really good example of that. Ive
never done cast bronze sculpture before. Ive never worked
with foundries in this way. Ive never worked with so-called
traditional processes or materials. But the text on which
River of Fundament is loosely based, Norman Mailers Ancient
Evenings, opened the door to this range of materials and
processes. It had to do with how the history of metal casting
runs through the Ancient Egyptian era. Each one of these
pieces addresses a different relationship to elemental metals,
32 Sculpture 33.4

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Matthew Barney is a prolific sculptor. Known for his Cremaster Cycle and Drawing
Restraint series, he has been taking materials and processes into unknown territo-
ries for more than 25 years. Working with impermanent materials such as petroleum
jelly, thermoplastics, and hybrid molding techniques, he has redefined how we look at contemporary art.
The risks that Barney has taken in terms of method and materials have alternately baffled and wowed
audiences. His complex narratives often overwhelm viewers who are used to the quick take on sculptural
objects. Today, his work resonates as both myth and substance for a whole new generation. Even if you
havent seen Barneys work in its entirety, you have certainly heard of and experienced it through the viral
intensity by which it circulates via the Internet and word-of-mouth.
I met with Barney in his Long Island City studio as he was about to finish his most complex work to date,
River of Fundament. This highly layered piece uses more traditional methods and materials to tell his stories.
The project involves multiple monumental sculptural works, a five-hour film, drawings, etchings, and one photo-
graphall of which are on view at Munichs Haus der Kunst through August 17, 2014.
Canopic Chest, 2011. Cast bronze,
installation view.
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to alloys, or to hybridity. Hybridity has
been really important to me in terms
of my interest in plastics and synthetics.
JR: So you have shifted toward a longer
lasting material setcopper, iron, bronze,
lapis, and steel, to name a few. I can see
how they might come from mythology,
but is it just the story? How did these
materials arrive in this project?
MB: I am quite opportunistic as an artist,
and I am always looking for a door to open
up a new set of sculptural problems. For
whatever reason, I can only find that
through a storytelling process. Each one of
these bigger projects has done that for
me. It usually starts with a location. In this
case, it started with a novel, which
is unusual for me. Ancient Evenings has
revealed a whole range of material rela-
tionships that I havent worked with before.
JR: A lot of this still has to do with the body,
right? Can you describe the body within
River of Fundament through materials?
MB: Yes, in the sense that Mailer describes
the beginning and the end as being a kind
of excremental state: one is born out of
shit and then passes back through shit in
order to live again. He describes the body
like the landscape, where the bowels of the
Earth are producing sulfur and molten iron.
This is something that Ive always been
interested inthat, in terms of storytelling
and in terms of sculpture, it could be po -
ssible to make significant leaps in scale by
treating the body and the landscape on
equal terms, so that theyre interchange-
able. So that the body and the landscape
are character and site at the same time.
So that you can be inside the body or out-
side the body; it can be geological in scale,
or it can be microscopic in scale, and these
different scales can operate simultaneously.
JR: In 2010, you cut up the body of a car
and melted it down to be reborn in front
of a live audience on the banks of the Rouge
River in Detroit. You built a temporary
foundry of five, 25- foot-tall cupolas and
cast DJED, a 25-ton iron sculpture. It was
the ritual of sculpture in a spiritual sense.
I dont even know how to describe it, and I
was there. How does this piece fit into your
thoughts on making sculpture?
MB: The work in Detroit was definitely a
ritual in terms of both my relationship to
performance and to filmmaking. My relationship to the audience is more about setting
up a situation in which a group of people witness something, as opposed to considering
them as an audience in the theatrical sense. Im interested in the collective experience
around something thats happening. This is how Ive always set up scenes in the filming,
though its changed subtly over the years. In the beginning, I was setting up the scenes
as if they were being performed. In terms of the economy of filmmaking, its ridiculous
to build a set completely in the round, so that it functions for the people on set as a reality.
On the screen, it doesnt matter that there is this level of realism. But, you could argue,
it does matter to the spirit of the piece.
JR: You showed just the cast object in 2011, way before the release of the film. That has
to operate in a certain way as well, dealing strictly with the sculpture.
MB: I think that what youre saying is true, and thats why I did itbecause the work could
be seen as divorced from any performance or film. That piece has a very particular pres-
ence because of how it was made, and whether you know much about iron casting, or art-
making at all, that process can be felt. The piece has an incredible aloofness to it, the
way it absorbs energy. Whereas Rouge Battery is quite generous.
JR: Yes, the copper is quite bright; it almost seems like its expanding.
MB: Exactly, whereas DJED is quite the opposite. Its quite strong in that way, but it is also
important to understand how it was made. Keith Edmier was telling me about iron castings
called bone coal castings that he was researching in Nordic countries. Human remains
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DJED, 2011. Cast iron and graphite blocks, installation view.
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were found around the base of the foundry
ruins. Researchers speculate that the bones
of a celebrated warrior were thrown into
the furnace as a way of investing the metal
with his spirit. If they were making a sword,
for example, they wanted the sword to have
the spirit of that dead warrior. The smiths
also realized that bone and body fat increased
the heat in the furnace, and with more
heat, they could make a harder sword. To
a certain extent, the bone was carbonizing
the iron and making steel by accident.
Theres something in that idea that relates
to what we did in Detroit. Its not just that
we took the body of the remaining Chrysler
Imperial from Cremaster 3, chopped it up,
melted it in the furnace, and cast a new
Imperial undercarriage. It was the ritual
involved in the casting, the collective expe-
rience of the witnesses, including every-
one working the furnaces. Everyone there
knew what was at stake.
JR: So, heres a community that is highly
invested in a material and has spent years
figuring out how to do this process for art.
But artists can do it in their backyard with
limited resources. I remember showing
you a few VHS tapes of iron pours that I
had done. I told you that I thought you
would be into it, and then you took it and
did the biggest thing that anyone has ever
done with this process in terms of art. You
surround yourself with people who can do
anything and everything they put their
minds to. How does that affect you? How
does the studio work for you like that?
MB: Id like to believe that all of us who
work on these projects are people of like
mind, and I think that the spirit of the work
attracts people like that. Most of the peo-
ple who come into the studio want to be
involved in that spiritits self-perpetuating
in that way. On the other hand, as you
know, its hard to find great collaborators.
It requires reaching out through people
whom I already trust to try to find other
exceptional collaborators.
JR: Having worked with you on various
projects over the years, I have often thought
about your process. I see that a veil or a
selective membrane of sorts stands between
the cinematic experience and the sculp-
tures that you create. I imagine for some-
thing to exist as a sculpture it has to go
34 Sculpture 33.4
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Above: Matthew Barney and Jonathan Bepler, River of Fundament: Khu, 2014. Production still. Below:
Matthew Barney and Jonathan Bepler, River of Fundament, 2014. Production still.
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through some sort of transformation as it
passes through this imaginary wall. How
do you decide what becomes sculpture
within your work?
MB: That is a hard question to answer
sometimes its knowable and sometimes
its not. Sometimes after the narrative has
passed through the object, it suddenly
presents itself as an object that has sculp-
tural presence. Other times, it fails to trans-
form. Theres a lot of mystery in that.
JR: A while back, I asked you the same ques-
tion, and you said, Some things frame
the sculpture, and some things are the
sculpture. I thought that was interesting:
what frames something versus what is
something. Everything has gone through
some sort of change. We are not standing
here next to three car hoods. We are
standing next to three car hoods (Imperial
Death Mask) cast in three different metals.
The whole injection of metallurgy is fasci-
nating on its own. Whats happening?
Whats the reaction between these metals?
MB: This is something that has always
interested me. I tend not to think of the
individual sculptures in an autonomous way.
Although they function as autonomous
works, its hard for me to separate them
from everything else in the system. The
system includes the narrative and all of
the objects, as well as the relationships
between the objects. In those relationships,
certain sacrifices need to be made.
I think this is what you are saying, that
there are certain pieces that frame, and
there are other pieces that just are. Those
pieces that frame, I consider sacrificial in
a certain way, because they lack an auto no -
mous presence. But they are effective in
other ways.
JR: Maybe theyre the bones that make
the steel?
MB: Exactly. There is a good example of
this in the plastic casting of the Imperials
front end with these metal castings of car
hoods. Its the most literal of all the pieces
in this family of works. I think its a neces-
sary piece, though its not as transformed
as I would typically want a work to be. I can
accept that, because it opens up other
opportunities.
JR: If I show my students an image of a hat
and ask them to tell me what it means,
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Above: Trans America, 2014. Cast sulfur, epoxy, and wood timbers, 3 views of work in progress.
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they would say that its a hat, it covers your head, it provides warmth. But, if I tell them
that its Charlie Chaplins hat, then all of a sudden it has a totally different meaning.
They now see the object in another light. This idea relates to what we are talking about
now.
MB: Its tricky though, isnt it? The Chaplins hat narrative is powerful, but it can also
stand in the way of something having sculptural presence, if the narrative sits in front
36 Sculpture 33.4
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Above: Shaduf, 2014. Cast brass, work in progress.
Below: Crown Victoria, 2014. Cast zinc, work in
progress.
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of it. Its often hard to locate where some-
thing stops being sculpture and starts
being a prop or a straight-up relic.
JR: Has your definition of sculpture changed
with River of Fundament?
MB: Possibly. DJED, the cast iron piece,
stands alone in this body of work. It relates
to other things that I have made, but it has
definitely opened up new doors for me as
a sculptor. The foundry works are a depar-
ture for me, but they also relate to the
cast plastic pieces Ive done in the past.
There is a relationship. Theyre different,
but similar.
JR: Like a petroleum jelly piece transformed
into plastic.
MB: Perhaps.
JR: Then theres another layer. Its not like
youve found a comfort zone and youre
sticking with it.
MB: One difference has to do with solidity
and permanence. It also has to do with
participating in a longstanding tradition.
JR: You have been a great influence on
younger artists. Who were your influences?
MB: Seeing Bruce Naumans work in the
80s, when I was first coming to New York,
was important. I would never have started
using video if I had not seen pieces like
Learned Helplessness in Rats and observed
how the video related to the object in those
worksthe relationship was more of
a proposition than a one-to-one relation-
ship. Those pieces eluded expectations
that something specifically happened with
this object and that the video is evidence
of that. There was an uncomfortable rela-
tionship between the moving image and
the object, and that completely inspired
me.
I would also say Joseph Beuys, but my
interest in him was full of misunderstanding,
which I think was important. With Beuys,
you might see one vague black and white
picture of an action involving an object.
Then you see the object with a vague idea
of what happened, and that leaves you
the space to make the rest of it up your-
self. That level of mystery became interest-
ing to me. Not knowing influenced me a lot.
On the opposite end of the scale, I would
say early Chris Burden. The descriptions
of his actions were so empirical. His language
really functioned as sculpture. Beuys and
Burden were like pillars, but at opposite ends of the spectrum in terms of how an object
could come out of an action.
JR: Is this the end of this project?
MB: I think that there will still be more work to be made from this project. This will be
good, because although I believe in working in a project-based way, theres something
about a more traditional studio practice that I want, and I think that can come at a time
when there are no deadlines, and things can evolve more slowly and reveal themselves
on their terms. Im looking forward to that.
Joshua Reiman is an artist living and working in Pittsburgh, where he is a visiting professor
of art at Carnegie Mellon University.
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Above and detail: Imperial Mask, 2014. Cast polycaprolactone, copper, bronze, and brass; Chrysler
Imperial front-end assembly, gold, lapis lazuli, turquoise, carnelian, polyethylene, and lead.
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The Persistence
of Her Memory
BY JOYCE BECKENSTEIN
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Flange 6rpm (detail), 201113. Foundry-poured
aluminum sculptures, motors (6 rpm each), and
DVD projections, 48 x 28 x 36 in. C
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In 1959, Bard College suspended Carolee
Schneemannfor moral turpitude, she
says. I painted a full-length frontal nude
portrait of my partner, James Tenney.
1
It
wasnt until the early 70s that Erica Jong
could write Fear of Flying, extolling the zip-
less fuck, and Judy Chicago begin her iconic
feminist installation, The Dinner Party. During
the intervening years, Schneemanns
pedestal wobbled. Some discredited her
work as pornographic and lewd; others cele-
brated her liberation of female identity. The
first American woman to use her body as an
art medium, Schneemann eased the way
for later artists and popular culture icons
such as Marina Abramovi c and Lady Gaga.
Although her works foreshadowed how
Americans today think about sex, human
rights, and art, she was best known until
recently for her audacity and not her inven-
tions, for her body and not her body of work.
But as recent articles, exhibitions, and
Marielle Nitoslawskas breathtaking 2013
documentary film about Schneemann,
Breaking The Frame, make clear, her accom-
plishments embrace issues beyond femi-
nism, including death, war, and personal
loss. Most important, and frequently lost
sight of, is the extent to which Schneemann
recognized the need to find radical new forms
to communicate her radical politics. Oddly,
a recent work, Flange 6rpm (201113)at
first glance a very un-Schneemann-like
abstract sculptural installationis a great
place to start unraveling her prolific output
of densely layered performances, installa-
tions, and films.
Debuting in a darkened gallery space at
P.P.O.W. in Chelsea, New York, Flange 6rpm
consisted of seven wall-attached rotating
disks, each one supporting three flange-
shaped, cast aluminum forms. Video pro-
jections of fire consumed the surrounding
walls. As the disks spun at a speed of six
rpm, these gritty, roughly textured flanges
performed motorized movements, precari-
ously leaning toward, then arching away
from each other. Mimicking the shapes of
flames lapping up the walls, their cast
shadows suggested birthing from an infer-
nal cocoon. Schneemann, in fact, filmed
the fire within the kiln as the flanges were
forged.
Fire as metaphor appears throughout her
work, back to her early box constructions
filled with dagger-like shards of painted and
burnt glass pulsing dangerous, seductive
light. In her jagged film collage, Viet Flakes
(1963), animated still photographs express
rage over scorched Vietnamese bodies, vil-
lages, and earth. The trope continues in
a blow-torched series of dust paintings
from the 1980s, multimedia constructions
embedded with computer parts and other
detritus of a technological age piloting its
own collision course. Fire as passion fuels
Fuses (196466), a groundbreaking film por-
traying lovemaking between Schneemann
and the late composer, James Tenney. Fol-
lowing the evolution of this strand of her
work is a bit like chasing smoldering brush
fires through different recesses of her con-
scious and unconscious self, her physical
body, her body of relationships, and her
body politic.
Schneemann grew up on a Pennsylvania
farm. She remembers her childhood fasci-
nation with animals and nature, as well
as her father, a country doctor, proffering
medical advice over the phoneat the
dinner table, while the family ate spaghetti.
She admits to peeking through a keyhole
while he examined female patients and
40 Sculpture 33.4
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Flange 6rpm, 201113. Foundry-poured aluminum
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recalls masturbating by age four, thinking Id found
a place between Santa Claus and God. Being female
imposed no constraints until she became a young
woman. Her father refused to pay for her college edu-
cation because she was a girl. Then, after she received
a full scholarship to Bard, her professors scorned her
interest in Paleolithic sexual imagerythis despite
tomes of art history texts filled with genitalia. She
remembers that her mentors never questioned erotica
by men; even Gustave Courbets notorious The Origin of
the World (1866), a close-up painting of a womans vulva,
got a pass. One professor, reminding her of her gender,
said, Youre a talented kid, but dont assume you can
be an artist. Schneemann would have none of this.
She possessed a formidable weapon, the one thing
Western art history prized above God, war, nature,
even precious works in goldan ideal female body. She
would use it, not against men, whom she mostly liked,
but against the notion of male domination and privilege.
Radical feminism, she decided, required radical rein-
terpretation of the female form, so her body became
her muse, transformed from an object of male pleas-
ure into a vehicle for self-realization, an aesthetic medium
with yet untested potential. If she had possessed a
fat, splotched torso, would she have done what she did?
Absolutely not, she says, the subversive use of the
ideal body was essential to dislocate the myth from its
art historical context. As Lucy Lippard wrote, Schnee -
manns strategies were designed to free women from
the bonds of male-defined pornography, to give women
their own natural eroticism, which has been suppressed
in Americas Puritan culture.
2
In the early 60s, Schneemann began a series of instal-
lation and performance pieces that symbolically
exploded painted content out of its frame. For Eye Body
36 Transformative Actions (1963), she positioned her
nude bodyalternately covered with grease, paint,
transparent plastic, and live garden snakesagainst
her studio installation Four Fur Cutting Boards (1963).
This multimedia work consisted of interlocking color
units, broken mirrors, glass, lights, and mechanized
umbrellas. The idea was to merge herself within a collage
of three-dimensional materials, transforming her concep-
tual painting into an environment of space, light, color,
and figurative form. Her moving body as part of this light-
drenched, motorized collage prefigures Flange 6rpm,
done 50 years later. Eye Body survives as a series of
17 photographs taken at the time by the painter Err.
Schneemanns political motivation for Eye Body
aimed to wrest the male artists traditional hold on
Above: Eye Body #5, 1963. Action for camera. Right: Eye Body #2,
1963. Action for camera. Both from Eye Body36 Transformative
Actions for Camera. C
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the female figure: it represents a revisionist
archeology of female iconographies through
which she recovers her ecstatic, erotic body
as an unconscious and conscious source of
knowledge.
3
In the most iconic of Eye Bodys
reproduced images, Schneemanns reclin-
ing hourglass figure simultaneously alludes
to the bare-breasted snake deity of ancient
Crete, who prevailed over the brute Mino-
taur, and to Venus, the physical embodi-
ment of the Western feminine ideal. Schnee -
mann-as-reconstituted-goddess, messily
slathered with grease and serpents, also
debunked the 20th-century Barbie dolls
those goddesses had become. Eye Body
reclaimed the 20,000-year-old Laussel god-
dess, still clutching her bisons horn, issuing
a clarion call to womankind to repossess
their sexuality as a rite and right of passage.
4
Meat Joy (1964) suggests mythic time
through a kinetic theatre that Schnee-
mann described as having the character
of an erotic rite: excessive, indulgent,
a celebration of the flesh as material.
5
Moving beyond installation to perform-
ance, this event began with fully clad par-
ticipants nonchalantly arranging materials,
putting on makeup, and sewing costumes;
300 pounds of shredded paper cascaded
down from above; popular music played,
interspersed with pre-recorded street
sounds; and participants undressed one
another, stripping down to nothing bikinis.
They then interacted according to Schnee-
manns carefully scripted erotic choreogra-
phy of what she calls sculptural move-
ments, ultimately collapsing, exhausted,
on the huge mound of paper. A serving
maid entered, carrying a tray of raw chick-
ens, fish, and sausage links. Participants
reacted spontaneously as the meat was
dropped on them. Some winced, others
caressed the raw fowl, and one man stuffed
a dead fish into his pants. The maid later
offered large buckets of paint, along with
brushes and sponges for streaking, drip-
ping, and hurling pigment on oneself and
others. The performance lasted for 60 to
80 minutes.
6
Pornographica Dionysian revelarro-
gant, exclaimed critics, though John Per-
reault wrote, It makes Schneemann, if not
an archetype, at least a living legend.
7
At
a time when most conversations about
eroticism and sensuality took place in ana-
lysts offices, Meat Joy brought the discus-
sion center stage, with its visceral materials,
non-verbal kinetic theater, and bizarre
silent narrative thick with icky taboos. What
after all conjures squeamishness more
than cuddling up to pimply skinned chick-
ens? But as Meat Joy participants warmed
to raw meat, Schneemann demonstrated
that sensual stimulation requires a mind
open to experiences that she says, could
at any moment be sensual, comic, joyous,
and repellent. Often lost in the fog of out-
rageousness, this important aspect of her
work extended the sexual revolution beyond
its traditional ties to feminism. Just when
birth control pills became widely available
to American women, Meat Joy cried for uni-
versal sexual liberation and gender equality:
ongoing, stubborn struggles, considering
that the Vatican officially condemned the pill
in 1968 and that 13 American states still
maintain anti-sodomy laws on their books.
Meat Joy as experimental theater also
reflects the epic art revolution that began
in the 1940s with Abstract Expressionism
and the loose network of brash young artists
associated with the New York School. A
movement that caused New York to eclipse
Paris as the heart of the art world, it took
shape against McCarthyisms power-mon-
gering tactics, censorship, and communist
42 Sculpture 33.4
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Above: Meat Joy, 1964. Performance with raw fish, chickens, sausages, wet paint, plastic, rope, and paper
scrap. Below: Fuses, 196466. 16 mm color film, 18 min.
sculpture
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paranoia. Beat Generation writers of that
eraJ.D. Salinger, Jack Kerouac, and Allen
Ginsbergpenned a new breed of disaf-
fected youth whose real-life progeny60s
hippiesin turn rallied to demands for civil
rights, Vietnam War protests, and nascent
feminist activism. Schneemann conceived
Eye Body and Meat Joy as a major partici-
pant in that downtown New York art scene,
part of a wide circle of artists that included
Claes Oldenburg, Andy Warhol, and Allan
Kaprow. All of them questioned, and then
bent, old rules about sex, politics, and art.
As a founding member of the Judson Dance
Theater, Schneemanns primary interest was
in kinetic theatreperformative painting
expanding physical energyoff the canvas,
out of the frame.
8
Like avant-garde film-
maker Stan Brakhage, another close friend
and colleague, Schneemann was profoundly
influenced by the French writer, poet, and
theater director Antonin Artaud.
Artaud believed in heightening the reality
of theater with strong elements of physi-
cality and gesture. As Susan Sontag described
it, In the redeemed art that Artaud imag-
ines, there are no separate works of art
only a total environment which is magical
purativeopaque.
9
Schneemann experi-
mented with Artauds pure theater by
replacing spoken dialogue with gestures,
materials, and movement, first in Eye Body,
then in Meat Joy.
Moving on to film, she created Fuses
(196466), a masterpiece of avant-garde
cinema. Using slow, grainy 16mm film, she
captured her explicit lovemaking sequences
with a Bolex camera positioned in differ-
ent locations within the bedroom of the
1750 farmhouse that she shared with Ten-
ney. This setting anchored home and domes-
tic life as constants, while time moved
on through shifts of light: one camera per-
spective, aimed at a window where Kitch
the cat observed all from her windowsill
perch, framed seemingly endless seasons
of night seducing day.
Fuses conveys its eroticism through an
oblique lens. Viewing entwined bodies
her arm, his leg, their buttocksas frag-
mented visual juggernauts, jamming ones
sense of where things are attached, posi-
tions the viewer-as-voyeur as if peering
through a keyhole, as Schneemann once
espied her father examining patients. She
further interrupts the choppy lovemaking
scenes by scratching, hand-painting, baking,
dying, and stamping the film, then hanging
it outdoors, exposed to the elements. These
interventions orchestrate the asymmetri-
cal rhythm of the lovers and the visual
rhythm of filmic collage. At the same time,
bold combinations of figuration with Abstract
Expressionist actions and painterly tech-
niques transform the celluloid canvas into
a viable art object unto itself. Remarkably,
the story stays intactthe camera, pan-
ning 19th-century wallpaper, hues of natu-
ral light drizzled through old lace curtains,
and Kitchs staring green eyes, poetically
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Mortal Coils, 199495. 4 slide projectors, motorized
mirror systems, 17 motorized manila ropes sus-
pended and revolving from ceiling units, and In
Mem oriumwall scroll text, dimensions variable.
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paints lovers transcending time in hushed,
intimate space.
Schneemanns fusion of abstraction and
figurative narration not only distinguishes
her from experimental filmmakers like
Brakhage, for whom formalist concerns
were paramount, it also accounts for the
powerful tensions in her work. Fuses agi-
tated, disruptive format, in maintaining an
unstable but unrelenting grip on its under-
lying story about romantic love and carnal
pleasure, subliminally taps collective anxi-
ety: the reality that longed-for intimacy is
sporadic, if not agonizingly elusive. Pain
pleasures verso and as much a part of
Schneemanns lexicon as issues of feminist
sexualityplays out in less well-known
sculptural installations that, like her body
works, draw on experimental kinetic the-
ater and technology-based multimedia
environments.
Recalling Artaud, who asked, What
are these thoughts which speech cannot
expresswhich find their ideal expression
on the stage? Mortal Coils (199495)
pays homage to 15 Schneemann friends,
Hannah Wilke and John Cage among them,
who died in the two preceding years.
10
Commenting on how we mourn, Mortal
Coils consists of 17 manila ropes suspended
from motorized ceiling units which rotate
the ropes so that they draw pool-like circles
on a floor thick with dust. Four slide pro-
jectors with moving mirror systems project
photos of the deceased against walls
papered with In Memoriams. This meta phor -
ical spiral eternally spinning against a
backdrop of ephemeraphotographs and
newspaper testimonialspoignantly mate -
rializes the essences of the departed, a com-
pelling reversal of Schneemanns melting
of body and materials in Fuses and Eye Body.
As opposed to the internalized experience
of profound personal loss, most people con-
front tragedy loosed by political or natural
furies as redundant streaming TV imagery,
viewed from the safe distance of a comfort-
able lounge chair. War Mop (1983) assaults
this numbing, dumbing down of human
catastrophe. A rag-mop attached to a mech-
anized motor is set beside a TV that beams
images of the Lebanese War (197590), its
weeping women and bombed-out cities.
Every eight seconds, the mop, a symbol of
painters brush and womans tool, loudly
(and unsuccessfully) pounds the monitor
to make it shut up. Taking this idea a step
further, More Wrong Things (2000)
exhibited at the 12th-century Rochechouart
Castle Museum last yearcreates a dense
forest of old TV monitors. Hanging from the
ceiling like severed heads in cable-wire
nooses, they broadcast a variety of disas-
ters. Instead of sleek, flat-screen models
streaming Twitter-sized bytes of infotain-
ment suitable for todays attention spans,
these archaic monitors, fittingly relegated
to a medieval venue, play their intense
human dramas to one another, sorrowful
messages in search of a competent mes-
senger.
44 Sculpture 33.4
War Mop, 1983. Plexiglas, mop, motor, and video of
destroyed Lebanese/Palestinian villages, sculpture:
24 x 62 x 20 in.
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Terminal Velocity (2001) speaks to the
power of art to deliver bald truth. For Schnee -
mann, that once again means going where
few dare to tread. This montage of computer-
scanned newspaper photos captures live
bodies plunging to their deaths from the
World Trade towers during the 9/11 attack.
Why show this? Because what repels com-
pels. Schneemann, who hit a tactile nerve
between squeamishness and pleasure in
Meat Joy, resurrects the device to express
grim reality: like roadside car crashes, dead
bodies are, for most, as seductive as naked
ones. Schneemann translates this irony
into an uncomfortable face-off between
a horrific event and viewers ambivalent
reactions to it. How obscene it is to gaze
at these figures, analyze their gestures,
note what theyre wearing and how grace-
fully or awkwardly they tumble through
space. Our identification with them is ter-
rifying, our fascination grotesque. Theyre
shown in stark black and white, against
the razor-like grid of the fated towers, the
soot of that apocalyptic day Photoshopped
away. We have nowhere to go but to the
unseen inferno below: back to fire, where
flanges flare, where destruction meets cre-
ation, where Eros meets Thanatos.
Joyce Beckenstein is a writer in New York.
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Notes
1
All quotations from Carolee Schneemann, unless otherwise noted, are taken from interviews with the artist recorded
in 2013.
2
Lucy R. Lippard, Overlay (New York: The New Press, 1983), p. 67.
3
Johannes Birringer, Imprints and Re-Visions: Carolee Schneemanns Visual Archeology, The Performing Arts Journal,
Vol. 15, No. 2, (1993), p. 34.
4
The Venus of Laussel is a carved stone relief depicting a female figure with exaggerated breasts, stomach, and
thighs. Discovered in a cave near Laussel, in Frances Dordogne Valley, it dates from Upper Paleolithic times.
5
Carolee Schneemann, More Than Meat Joy (Kingston, New York: McPherson & Company, 1979), p. 63.
6
Meat Joy was performed as part of the First Festival of Free Expression at the American Center in Paris, May 1964;
Dennison Hall, London, June 1964; and Judson Memorial Church, New York City, November 1964.
7
John Perreault, Imagining Carolee Schneemann, January 2006, available at <www.artsjournal.com/artopia/2006/
01/imagining_carolee_schneemann.html>.
8
Maura Reilly, Painting, What It Became, in Carolee Schneemann: Within and Beyond the Premises, edited by Brian
Wallace, (New Paltz, NY: Samuel Dorsky Museum of Art, 2010), p. 29.
9
Susan Sontag, ed., Antonin Artaud, Selected Writings (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press,
1976), Introduction, p. L.
10
Antonin Artaud, For the Theater and Its Double, in Antonin Artaud, Selected Writings, op. cit., p. 231.
More Wrong Things, 2000. Site-specific, multi-chan-
nel video installation with 17 monitors suspended
from the ceiling, wires, cables, cords, and sensor-
activated projections.
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Paul McCarthys exhibition at Hauser & Wirths gigantic 18th Street
space included sculpture carved out of blocks of walnut that were
pieced together from dark and lighter segments of wood. From these
composite blocks, McCarthy produced medium-size to colossal
tchotchkes (a genre that is dear to him), thereby entering the arena
in which Jeff Koons has been working for more than 30 years. Koons,
the come-back kid who has been getting a huge amount of attention
recently, is the man to both paraphrase and beat. His sensibility,
though, is very different from McCarthysaiming for immaculacy
and perfection. McCarthys carved imagery was drawn from Walt
Disneys 1937 animated film version of Snow White and the Seven
Dwarfsfunny, sentimental, sexual, and at times frightening childrens
stuff, and Koonsian territory, par excellence. However, McCarthy
like his friend Mike Kelley, with whom he occasionally collaborated
takes us from childhood longings back to the darkest recesses of infantile
behavior.
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Opposite: WS The Prince, 2013. 4
stills. Above: White Snow, Flower Girl,
201213. Black walnut, 304.8 x 152.4
x 96.5 cm.
BY MICHAL AMY
Paul McCarthy
Rotten to
the Core
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As we age, some of us hold on to imagery
that transports us back to a time when
we believe we were happier, even if only
momentarily, inside the movie theater or
in front of a TV screen. We have all seen the
embarrassing, age-inappropriate objects
flecking certain interiors (Hello, kitsch).
McCarthys work is always about taste and
decorum. What is appropriate? What is
acceptable? What are we repulsed by? What
are we secretly drawn to? Who draws up
the rules? Can you spell hypocrisy? What
about inhibition? Where do these primal
urges come from? What are we repressing?
McCarthys project is important because he
constantly pushes the envelope, forcing us
to rethink the very nature of art.
A performance artist steeped in process,
who often uses liquid or malleable food-
stuffs to allude to other viscous materials,
McCarthy directed the virtuoso carving
of the walnut so that it achieves the round-
ness and softness of wet claythereby
reminding us of the Baroque exuberance of
late Bernini, grandfather of kitsch in the
opinion of some critics. Significantly, in light
of the role played by nostalgia, some figures
fuse together, increase suddenly in scale,
or are doubledmemory is imperfect
creating monstrous apparitions and hybrids
fit for this age of genetic manipulations. The
huge White Snow, Bookends (2013), with
its unnaturally smooth and mellifluous han-
dling of the wood, is a stand-out, collapsing
too much visual information in its two sec-
tionsone upright, the other tilted back by
90 degrees, providing just the right amount
of optical ambiguity and mental confusion.
McCarthys exhibition WS, at the Park
Avenue Armory, delved much deeper into
the story of Snow White and thelargely
inventedlife of Walt Disney. This entirely
different affair made optimum use of the
late 19th- century buildings gigantic drill
hall while reaching into the corridors and
cells along the halls longer sides. A blast of
noise mixing repetitive instrumental music,
overlapping talk, cries, groans, sighs,
screams, panting, and endless laughter
greeted viewers as they approached the
hall. These sounds (coming from speakers
lining the sides of the hall) accompanied
four images projected side by side on huge
horizontal screens suspended high above
the floor on both of the shorter walls (four-
channel, seven hours, drawn from circa 100
hours of footage). In The Feature, Armory
Edit, WS (White Snow, played by Elyse Pop-
pers) first appears alone in the forest, then
entering the house, meeting the dwarves,
sleeping, partying, drinking (the latter two
are Koonsian subjects), and eatingin
short, a Bacchic revelry, until things spin
horribly out of control, both WS and WP
(Walt Paul, played by Paul McCarthy) are
killed, and, finally, the young Prince arrives.
Few people saw this long film montage
from beginning to end. Instead, visitors
walked into and out of the hall as the movie
continued to roll on, just like the world out-
side. The Feature offers all the messiness of
life, with its tedium, ugliness, stupidity, and
endless repetitions, as one and the same
scene (shot from different angles) and
scenes shot in different rooms are shown
side by side, occasionally slipping in and out
of focus as the camera pans in and then
out. The actors, not all of them particularly
attractive, are further deformed by huge
noses. The situation is complicated by the
appearance of two other White Snow fig-
ures, wearing bouffant skirts in primary
colors, and hyper-realist silicone sculptures
of WS and WP in the nude, which are sub-
48 Sculpture 33.4
White Snow, Bookends, 2013. Black walnut, 2
elements, 14 ft. high.
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jected to all manner of violent handling. It
all becomes impossibly perplexing when
one sees WPbrilliantly played by
McCarthy made up beyond recognition
forcing objects down the throat of his sili-
cone counterpart. The silent, pliant figure
is eventually raped by the dwarves with
the stick of a broom, so violently that the
brooms handle exits the figures mouth
this in a city where not so long ago a black
man was raped by a police officer with a
club. (The exhibition was off limits to persons
under the age of 17.)
The center of the hall contained the
ranch-style house and strange garden
where the movie sequences were filmed.
McCarthys garden, a realm fraught with
artifice and illuminated by luridly colored
stage lighting, is part Hudson River School
painting, part San Fernando Valley, part
Graceland, part sick sublime, and part Pol-
locks assertion that I am nature. It is
fascinating how McCarthywho has lived
for so long in the shadow of Hollywood,
and who came of age during the early years
of TV broadcastingexposes the process
by letting us see the stage sets, left
almost exactly as they were at the end of
shooting, and allows glimpses of the cam-
eramen, who walk in and out of the
frames in the films. Where does reality end
and fiction begin?
WS, taken as a whole, constituted a
Gesamtkunstwerk in which sound, moving
images, sculpture, architecture, light, and
smell joined forces to create a cumulative
impression, as viewers navigated the
sprawling suburban ensemble. When peek-
ing into the furnished rooms of the firmly
middle-class housesome in an appalling
state of disorder, with coagulating food and
drink denoting filth in the broadest possible
termsone object looked strangely out of
place (that is, if one overlooks the silicone
corpses of WS and WP, the latter still
kneeling over a metal tub). Lying on the
floor was a copy of Artforum, with a drip
painting by Pollock on the cover. This detail
served as a reminder of the importance of
the tormented Abstract Expressionist mas-
ter to the development of the younger
artist. McCarthy has also received much
from Bruce Naumanparticularly, use of
space, repetition, boredom, dreariness
and it was fascinating to see how
McCarthy used this legacy as a springboard
to leap into the void.
WS is profoundly troublingas trou-
bling, in its way, as Pasolinis splendid last
movie, Salo, which is likewise steeped
in culture and politics. It is also profoundly
sad. Witness the scene (shown in the cor -
ridor off the drill hall) in which WS and WP
stride in slow motion, wailing and nude,
WS Olympia, 2013. 3 stills.
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across the garden, with gestures and
expressions borrowed from Masaccios
Expulsion from the Garden of Eden in the
Brancacci Chapel in Florence. Or, witness
WP on his knees approaching WS, the
archetypal mother figure, who lies nude
on a couch in the superb video-diptych
WS Olympia (shown in a room off the drill
hall), suffering from a splitting headache:
Walt, did you do your homework?Did
you do your homework Walt?Are you
lying to me Walt? She then proceeds to
pull at Walts ear and wash out his mouth
with a bar of soap. Disneys relationship
to his hysterical, abusive, and incestuous
mother was, if I follow McCarthy correctly,
rewritten and transformed into the story
of the loving and caring Snow White and
the child-like dwarfs in the animated film.
Significantly, WP is portrayed in the rest
of the WS films as an increasingly dys-
functional and tormented tormentor in his
own right. Walt Disney, as perceived by
McCarthy (and other critics, including the
artist Llyn Foulkes), is a sly manipulator
Mr. Wholesome U.S.A.who delivers
what is allegedly best for our young ones
while brainwashing them in an effort
to keep the white, puritanical, imperialist,
capitalist worldview very much alive. Mickey
Mouse Club, anyone?
There is a huge amount of violence,
nudity, tediousness, loneliness, and despair
in WS, particularly the terrific hour-long
film Living with Walt (shown in the corridor
off the drill hall). There is also desire, which
few, however, get to fulfill. In the film WS
The Prince, male porn actors penetrate the
silicone semblance of a hairless woman
in the garden and climax (think Duchamps
tant Donns, and Koons); the sculpture
was displayed in a retail refrigerator display
unit, in the drill hall, for individual titilla-
tion. WS fellates a microphone held by WP
at the end of a long, phallic pole in the film
WS Microphone Dream. Most of us are
deeply repressed, and food, or the rubbish
that passes for it, becomes a substitute
for sex, gore, and human waste in the 90-
minute film-diptych WS Walt Paul Cooking
Show. McCarthys art is an art of excess.
Everyone experienced various states of
arousal while negotiating WS. And then,
there was the humor, scatological or other-
wise, which enabled us to make some sort
of sense out of it all, just as it allows us
to make sense out of life. We would not be
able to survive without it.
In WS, McCarthy takes a well-known
and highly structured narrative and sees
how far he can stretch it, load it with tan-
gents and digressions, and layer it with
meanings both explicit and subliminal, so
that the whole, with its endless repetitions,
spins like a carousel, seemingly veering
wildly beyond all control, though not quite.
McCarthy is a grand master at making the
familiar look terribly unsettling. The story of
Snow White, as pure as snow, is about inno-
cence and perseverance in the face of ill
fortune, the ultimate triumph of good over
evil, and the rewards such victory brings
along with it. It belongs to the genus of the
fairy tale, which aims to instill good habits
and strong morals in young children.
McCarthy, however, has little patience for
ethical lessons, wherever they come from,
and proceeds to turn the whole thing on its
head. The corruption of youth is one of
his preferred subjects. Who can forget the
tawdry tableau of The Garden (199192) in
which a father initiates his son in the joys of
sex? The deliberately ugly rendering of the
scene almost surpasses the unpleasantness
of the subject itself. McCarthy has great fun
50 Sculpture 33.4
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WS Walt Paul Cooking Show, 2013. 4 stills.
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in making us, the supposedly perfectly blas
observers of the contemporary art scene,
feel more than a little squeamish.
Children are quasi-sacred territory, deemed
innocent because they lack an adult
understanding of good and evil. In short,
children are off limits. Because they
will determine the future of humanity and
thus the very survival of our planet, they
are considered our most precious legacy
though McCarthy might intone that you
wouldnt think them important at all,
judging by the state of our school systems
and healthcare systems, the ubiquity
of money-driven food conglomerates, our
treatment of the environment, and the
number of children living in poverty in
what is claimed to be the greatest nation
in all of history.
Our children, we proclaim, need both
nourishing and protection, since they are
so terribly vulnerable. This world of pre-
conceptions concerning what lessons (and
literature) are best shared with children is
what McCarthy profanes with such gusto.
His hallucinatory scenes, using the story
of Snow White as their launch pad, are
enacted by adults who perform as if they
were retardedor at least under a situa-
tion of tremendous stress. McCarthy aims
to surpass reality itself in terms of outra-
geousness.
The sweetness and innocence embodied
by Snow White also characterize the hero-
ine of a late 19th-century story about a
young girl who goes to live with her grand-
father in the Swiss Alps. Her almost tran-
scendental goodness and the supposed
purity of her clich-ridden Swiss environ-
ment were too tempting for McCarthy and
Mike Kelley to resist taking down in Heidi,
Midlife Crisis Trauma Center and Negative
Media-Engram Abreaction Release Zone
(both 1992), thereby exposing the hypoc -
risies buried in the worldview that comes
to life in Johanna Spyris 1880 novel, a story
that has found many ways into 20th-century
popular culture, worldwide.
Pinocchio, the protagonist of Carlo Col-
lodis 1883 childrens novel, is a far more
mischievous, multi-dimensional creature.
An animated marionette made of wood,
Pinocchio has all manner of adventures
and ends up in all kinds of trouble, which
he lies to get out of, which causes his nose
to grow longer. This story, with its many
adaptations in popular culture (including
the 1940 animated Disney movie), offers
enormously fertile terrain for an artist
intent on exposing our basest instincts like
McCarthy (Pinocchio Pipenose Household-
dilemma, 1994).
WS is insane, but no more than so
much of what we see, hear, or read about,
reaching from the reality of our bedrooms
and backyards to the highest levels of gov-
ernment. As McCarthys previous critiques
of idealized fantasy demonstrate, his is
clearly not an optimistic worldview. The
American waywhich Walt Disney cham-
pionedis corrupt and corrupting.
Despite our pretensions, we are all rotten
to the core. We embrace what is base
just look at our entertainment industry,
McCarthy declares. We purport to love
God, family, and country, but are driven by
hate, lust, and greed. We are fraudsas
fake and ugly as those preposterous noses.
There is a huge amount of food for
thought in WS, whichinterestingly
remains a work in progress.
Michal Amy is a professor of the history
of art at the Rochester Institute of Tech-
nology.
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The Garden, 199192. Wood, fiberglass, steel, elec-
tric motors, latex rubber, foam rubber, wigs, cloth-
ing, artificial turf, leaves, pine needles, rock, and
trees, 2 views of installation.
sculpture
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Yayoi Kusamas rise to the top ranks of the art world has been hard won. A precocious
young artist trained in Nihonga cultural traditions in Matsumoto, Japan, she displayed
an original vision. Her imaginative use of oil paint and other materials, and her intuitive
grasp of abstraction, led to solo shows in her native town and in Seattle before she was
25. By age 30, she was in New York, working first on a new kind of gestural painting and
then on her accumulationsfurniture, and later fashions, overflowing with sewn
muslin protuberances, both phallic and floral. By the late 60s, nudity and polka dots on
people, animals, and objects projected a message of obliteration, though Kusama didnt
exactly spell out what this meant. There are many ways to obliterate something, and
perhaps her meaning has changed over the years. Does she see the art world as asking
her to give up self, sanity, and the norms of civilization? Or is she obliterating corrup-
tion, crime, disease, and repression? Kusamas work embraces paradoxes while choreo-
graphing color and form. She condenses inner and outer moments of despair and joy
into works with infinite possibilities.
Jan Garden Castro: Lingering Dream (1949), a pigment on paper work, depicts a red field
sprouting attenuated red sunflowers and lilies against a blue sky. In Self-Portrait (1950),
you are a red sunflower with Mona Lisa lips, which implies a personal identification. Why
did you connect with the sunflower?
52 Sculpture 33.4
Y K Finding Love
BY JAN GARDEN CASTRO
Infinity Mirrored RoomThe Souls of Millions of
Light Years Away, 2013. Wood, metal, mirrors, plas-
tic, acrylic panel, rubber, LED lighting system, and
acrylic balls, 287 x 415 x 427 cm.
A Conversation with
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Yayoi Kusama: Among flowers, the sunflower particularly attracts
me for its liveliness and gorgeousness.
JGC: What is your perspective on the body, especially the female
body, as it relates to your sculpture, performance, and fashion?
YK: Human life is full of mystery, beyond our speculation, and
that interests me a lot.
JGC: When you began making art, did you think of yourself as chal-
lenging the boundaries of sculpture, performance, and fashion?
YK: Since my childhood, Ive always been interested in various
things. I designed and made clothes with only one sleeve, and
painted, of course, and arranged stones on a riverbank. Those
things were difficult for adults to understand. Ive always done
whatever I wanted, and I dont think that Im trying for the border
of the territory.
JGC: Your accumulation series preceded Louise Bourgeoiss bulbous
body costumes and sculpture for The Destruction of the Father
(1974). Did Bourgeois possibly see your accumulation works?
YK: Yes, I assume so. I dont think she was inspired just by me
though, but by various people. There are several works that
resemble mine, but she created her own amazing works.
JGC: Did there used to be, and is there still, a mind-body tension
when you are making art?
YK: Yes, I get very tired both mentally and physically. I want to
create new ideas that have never existed in history, have never
been done by anybody.
JGC: In 1966, you said, I feel that if I want to be a professional artist
I must associate with these lowest of the lowIll get sick. However
I have already been sick for many years so it will not matter. Could
you explain what you meant? Why did making art make you sick?
YK: Because Ive pursued completely new ideas that have never been
done before. Ive worked hard with great awe toward creativity.
JGC: You also said, I could not love anybody.
YK: I have faced everyone with art. I have pursued love and peace
through art and have written many poems and novels on love. I
have lived with love. Love is also one of the themes of my art.
JGC: You developed friendships with quite a few artists and designers,
including Joseph Cornell and Georgia OKeeffe.
YK: I respect both of them very much. Georgia OKeeffe was a
great artist, and I was deeply moved when she advised me as I was
planning to move to the United States.
JGC: How did you end up working with the Louis Vuitton group?
YK: Back in the 60s, I worked a lot on fashion and staged many
happenings in New York. Marc Jacobs, who was interested in my
work and showed respect for my past activities, came to my stu-
dio in Tokyo with a bouquet of flowers. Later, he proposed working
with me, and I agreed. I wanted to bring out a new world in the
field of fashion. Our collaboration is now reported around the
world, and that keeps me busy all the time.
JGC: Color plays a huge role your work. How do you approach it?
YK: The importance of color in this world is enormous. I celebrate
all of the colors.
JGC: Do you have any advice for todays artists?
YK: Its an important role to live with creativity and rich humanity.
Please respect love and peace and overcome difficulties such as ter-
rorism. Please express your own wonderful message to the world.
Jan Garden Castro is a Contributing Editor for Sculpture.
Love Is Calling (detail), 2010. Wood, metal, mirrors, tile, acrylic panel, rubber,
blowers, lighting element, speakers, and sound, 443 x 865 x 608 cm.
Manhattan Suicide Addict, 2010present. Video projection and mirrors, 2 views
of installation.
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The Publics
Sculpture
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Seward
Johnson
Unconditional Surrender, 2005. Bronze, life-size.
From the Beyond the Frame series.
BY DAVID FURCHGOTT
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Seward Johnson is best known to the public
for making sculpture that can be universally
understoodand his work is certainly uni-
versally seen. Sculptors in the know tend
to think of him as an archangel patron of
sculpture institutions. So the question arises:
How did Johnson and his work come to play
such an important dual role in the realm
of sculpture today?
With the opening of his five-decade retro-
spective at Grounds For Sculpture in Hamil-
ton, New Jersey, beginning this month (May
4September 21), a look at both Johnson
and his work is long overdue. His personal
work preceded all of his other activities in
support of artists. In his 30s, he came face
to face with his lack of interest in pursuing
the family corporate businesses versus his
personal need to create (he had always
painted). His wife Cecelia recognized his
artistic and tactile interests and suggested
that he try sculpture. His career was secured
from the beginning when his first sculpture
won a national sculpture competition spon-
sored by U.S. Steel.
From the beginning of his career as a
sculptor, Johnson recognized the particu-
lar nature, power, and attraction of sculp-
ture as the most public art. Given the con-
cepts, skill, and the extraordinary means to
do so, he had the facility to address public
art in a very different manner than most
artists. He created works that the public
found accessible, familiar, and endearing.
Johnson has said that after years of painting,
I wanted to make provocative statements
about what it means to be human, but
he realized that no matter how powerful
one of my paintings might be, it would
end up in a frame somewhere on a wall. By
placing his sculpture in public, he often
created a point of interest in what had been
a nondescript location. His works made an
occasion out of what might otherwise have
been a simple pass-by. He used bronze fig-
ures doing what ordinary people might do,
in places where ordinary people might be
found, as a means of re-thinking and appre-
ciating the everyday. He felt that sculpture
was the only art form through which I
would be able to adequately express the
most important ideas about the human
experience. From the beginning, his goal
was to show people who may not see it
that the daily tasks of their lives are cen-
tral parts of the beauty of being alive.
Johnsons presentation at Grounds For
Sculpture is intended to be a complete
overview of his work to date (he is now 83),
with more than 150 works on view. The exhi -
bition begins with the early experiments
that led to the initial series of works explor-
ing the ordinary actions of people in public
space: reading newspapers, eating lunch,
hailing a cab, gardening, and other seem-
ingly mundane tasks. These works were
originally intended to celebrate the ordi-
naryto make both public space and the
commonplace activities that occur in
public view more significant, examining
a captured a moment. Ironically, these
life-like bronze sculptures in parks and malls
humanized the environment.
56 Sculpture 33.4
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The Awakening, 1980. Aluminum, 17 x 70 ft.
sculpture
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Johnsons wry wit is well known to those
who have met him. He is bluntly candid,
uncensored, and quite playful in a very dis-
arming way. However, that same wit in his
sculpture has often gotten in the way of his
being taken seriously as an artist. After all,
by some standards, art must be a very seri-
ous matterbut Johnson asks if it always
has to be.
His work later moved to re-imagine
notable Impressionist paintings as three-
dimensional environments. He found it
intriguing that one might be able to view
those famous scenes from an angle other
than the singular view originally presented
by the painter. He says, I find it so moving
to watch people interact with these sculp-
tures. That is one thing that these pieces
do: they invite an intimacy with the paintings
that the paintings themselves dont allow
Above: Midstream, 1987. Bronze, life-size. From the
Celebrating the Familiar series. Right: Dejeuner
Dj vu, 1994. Bronze, life-size. From the Beyond
the Frame series.
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simply due to limitations of scale, depth, and
access. So, in his own teasing manner, he
included a separate, unseen group of bronze
guests behind the crowd in Were You Invited
(inspired by Renoirs Luncheon of the Boating
Party). At the hidden table are bronze rendi-
tions of gallery director Phillip Bruno with
Johnson and his friend Red Grooms and two
other artistsfriends crashing the party,
as Johnson wryly notes.
His third series of iconic images revisited
is also a riff on two-dimensional images
taken into the third dimension; but this time,
he based his work on visual presences as
emblazoned in our collective memory as the
flags and maps that inspired Jasper Johns.
In Forever Marilyn, Johnson interprets the
famous photos of Marilyn Monroe standing
on a New York subway grate, skirt flying
high. He also transformed the iconic photo
of a sailor kissing a nurse as the end of
World War II is announced.
The retrospective also includes some works
that stand out from these three groups.
Most notable among them may be The
Awakening, the subterranean giant arising
from the earth that made its debut at the
International Sculpture Centers 11th Inter-
national Sculpture Conference and Exhibition
in Washington, DC, in mid-1980. After the
sculpture was installed at Hains Point in
Washington, images of it were reproduced
in hundreds of newspapers around the U.S.
and the world, as well as in numerous mag -
azines, ranging from ArtNews to a full page
in Life. It was at this time that Johnsons artis-
tic career and his patronage of support sys-
tems for artists most publicly came into view.
As the ISCs first full-time executive direc-
tor from 1980 through mid-1995, my partic -
ular view of Johnson may be unique. In 1978,
following a very successful International
Sculpture Conference in Toronto, the fate of
the International Sculpture Center was in
jeopardy. The organization, which was uni-
versity housed, did not extend beyond its
role as the initiator of biennial conferences
and as a repository of technical information.
It had no structure or means to match the
largess that the Canadian government had
lavished on the event that year, and the
University of Kansas, whose sponsorship ISC
founder Elden Tefft had enjoyed since 1960,
had slipped into an attitude of tolerating
the ISC rather than sponsoring it.
At that time, the Johnson Atelier (then in
Princeton, New Jersey) was rapidly becom-
ing the technological center of the sculp-
ture universe. Tefft visited Johnson there,
and Johnson offered to incorporate the ISC
as its own nonprofit entity and to provide
basic sponsorship for the next conference,
58 Sculpture 33.4
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Left: (background) Makeshift Memorial, 2005, and
(foreground) Double Check, 1982. Bronze, life-size.
Above: Holding Out, 1987. Bronze, life-size.
sculpture
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scheduled for Washington, DC, in 1980. A
grand event was planned on paper, and six
months before it was to take place, Johnson
and the ISC Board hired me as the confer-
ence director. The conference drew well over
2,000 attendees, spawned 60-plus commu-
nity exhibitions, and hosted an exhibition of
88 significant works by leading sculptors of
the time. The Awakening was originally to
have an honorary place in that exhibition,
but on its well-received unveiling, it was
given its due full status.
Following the conference, Johnson as
Chairman of the ISC Board, asked me what
I thought the ISC needed to be a substan-
tive and sustainable organization. At the top
of my list were establishing an ongoing
membership program and a magazine, to
which Johnson agreed and offered signifi-
cant sponsorship. He remained on the ISC
Board for four years, until family financial
disputes required that he step down. Clearly,
whatever the International Sculpture Center
has grown to become today would not have
been possible without that brief period of
very significant patronage from Seward John -
son. In fact, I would suggest that the ISC
might not have survived beyond the early
1980s without him.
For the following 10 years of my tenure
into the mid-1990s, Johnson was not finan-
cially involved with the ISC, but the Johnson
Atelier, which he heavily sponsored, remained
a technological leader in the realm of casting
and fabrication. Since the ISC moved from
Washington, DC, to Hamilton in the late
1990s, the organizations connection to
Johnson and his various enterprises has been
primarily that of a tenant with an under-
standing landlord. The Johnson Atelier later
spawned a successorthe Digital Atelier,
which was originally established to expand
the availability of 3-D technology to artists for
use in creating large scale and complex sculp-
ture. The Digital Atelier subsequently mor-
phed into an independent and successful
business enterprise providing technical assis-
tance and know-how to practicing sculptors.
Grounds For Sculpture (GFS) itself is yet
another Johnson idea that has come full cir-
cle to become a recognized and respected
entity in the world of sculpture and in the
realm of sculpture- and sculptor-supporting
institutions. Johnsons Sculpture Foundation
and other family foundations have under-
written the birth, infancy, and adolescence
of this now well-accepted sculpture park.
With more than 270 works on 42 acres and
in three buildings, the collectionwhich
attracted 157,000 visitors last yearcontains
works by 175-plus sculptors, including George
Segal, Kiki Smith, Anthony Caro, Beverly
Pep per, Magdalena Abakanowicz, and many
more. After Johnsons retrospective, forth-
coming GFS exhibitions will feature Jae Ko
and Elyn Zimmerman.
Grounds For Sculpture has become a con-
sequential player in the increasing array of
open-air museums. In its home state, it was
voted favorite art museum in New Jersey by
popular poll. GFS has garnered support from
the National Endowment for the Arts, the
Geraldine R. Dodge Foundation, and Ameri-
can Express, among other national entities.
Appropriately, Johnsons retrospective coin-
cided with the emergence of Grounds For
Sculpture as an independent entity, with the
buildings and collections being gifted from
the supporting foundations to the sculpture
park itself. Certainly this is a gift of conse-
quential proportion.
While Seward Johnson would like to simply
be known as a sculptor who loves designing
and making works of art that are appreci-
ated by his public and his colleagues, his
legacy extends to depths and proportions
that can hardly be limited to his creativity
with objects, but must also include his cre-
ativity and leadership within the field. In my
view, this is no less of an artistic statement.
David Furchgott was the ISCs first full-time
Executive Director (198095). In 1995, he
began International Arts & Artists, a Wash -
ington, DC-based nonprofit focused on
cultural exchange.
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King Lear, 2008. Cupro nickel, 20 ft. tall.
sculpture
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Member Price $24.95
Non-Member Price $29.95
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commons.html
Artists Reclaim the Commons
New Works / New Territories / New Publics
Available from ISC Press
Edited by Glenn Harper
and Twylene Moyer
Percent-for-art commissions may represent the official, professionalized
face of public art, but beyond the plazain neighborhoods, back streets,
and vacant lots; in suburban hinterlands, rural villages, and remote virtual
realmsanother kind of art has been taking shape, one that questions the
very nature and experience of the commons. Driven by artists, curators,
and nonprofit organizations, these independent projects treat public space
as more than an outdoor gallery. Whether temporary or permanent, guerrilla
or sanctioned, object or action, such works invite us to imagine alternative
ways of seeing and being while opening up new possibilities for individual
and collective consciousness. When we enter their domain, public space
becomes a site of resistance, a stage on which to enact experimental
scenarios, and a catalyst for actiona place of both art and life.
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advertise in
contact: Brenden OHanlon
email: advertising@sculpture.org
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The New Earthwork Art Action Agency
Edited by Twylene Moyer and Glenn Harper
For more than 40 years, sculptors have been at the forefront of
environmental and ecological/social innovation, making works
that treat the earth as creative partner rather than resource
and raw material. The new earthwork, which is currently at the
leading edge of sculptural practice, means art for the future of
humanity and the planet; it means a sustainable and vital artistic
practice that not only solves problems but dares to ask questions
and seek answers across disciplinary boundaries.
Available now at
http://sculpture.gostorego.com/new-earth-works.html
Available from isc Press
Member Price:
$24.95
Non-Member Price:
$29.95
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68 Sculpture 33.4
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Lynda Benglis
Cheim & Read
Lynda Bengliss terrific show of table-
top clay sculptures reminded us, yet
again, that the New York Schools
achievements can be furthered
in the hands of a top-notch artist.
Benglis, who has studios all over the
world, made these works in New
Mexico, but she remains a quintes-
sential New Yorker. Her work main-
tains an erotically charged, assertive
bravado, and these smallish sculp-
tures, resting on white plinths, are
formally exuberantmade more so
by the freewheeling, painterly treat-
ment of their surfaces. The combina-
tion of uninhibited energy and
forceful but also disciplined handling
of the clay prompts enthusiasm and
delight and perhaps a touch of
regret that such work is increasingly
difficult to find. But Benglis is so
enthusiastic in her work that viewers
cannot help but feel optimistic that
someone still feels excited about clay
sculpture.
She comes across as a spontaneous
artist whose works in this show dis-
play not only earthy, rhythmic form,
but also a driving vigor representa-
tive of Ab-Ex achievements in paint-
ing. It is worth noting that Bengliss
accomplishments in clay sculpture
came relatively late in her career,
starting in the early 1990s. Her
application of glazes spans a wide
spectrum of colors that echo and
strengthen the forms. One work (all
were made in 2013) consists of two
crumpled, narrow, box-like, open
columns attached at the middle.
The glazing in orange and red reiter-
ates the shape. Another work slides
like a snake in and around itself,
leaving the impression of coiling
movement or internal viscera. The
glaze on the outside of the coils is
a dark slate blue, with yellow on
the inside.
Since she began making clay
sculptures, Benglis has not lost her
reviews
Lynda Benglis, Chitimacha, 2013.
Glazed ceramic, 18.5 x 28 x 12 in.
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sense of pleasure in the medium.
Sometimes the works suggest
smashed geometric forms, and some-
times they are highly organic. One
piece resembles a stomach resting
on top of several vaguely intestinal
shapes; the forms are balanced in
ways that emphasize the near
anarchy of their construction. Every
one of these works, made in the
moment, deserves to be seen in
the moment, experienced in a flash
of insight. One final work can be
mentioned: a curved, yellow tube
resting on a white pedestal; an
extension rising from the top
wraps out across the sculpture like
a flag. Glazed in yellow and black,
the work translates all the forceful-
ness of Franz Klines brushstrokes
into a powerful three-dimensional
form.
Jonathan Goodman
SAW IsAWct sco
Fujiko Nakaya
Exploratorium
For the grand opening of the Explor -
a toriums new home on the piers of
San Francisco Bay, Japanese artist
Fujiko Nakaya created Fog Sculpture
#72494also titled Fog Bridgea
temporary installation created from
a material synonymous with this city
by the Bay. The appropriately named
work, which stretched along the
150-foot-long pedestrian bridge con-
necting Piers 15 and 17, directly
outside the Exploratorium, conjured
a delightful explosion of fog by
blasting water through 800 nozzles
positioned on both sides of the
walkway.
In countless film noir scenes, fog
has a mystical quality that romanti-
cizes the mundane, heightens the
dramatic, and instills mystery and
wonder into everything it surrounds.
But in real life, San Franciscos early
Above: Lynda Benglis, Jicarilla, 2013. Glazed ceramic, 16 x 19 x 17 in. Below:
Lynda Benglis, Vaquero, 2013. Glazed ceramic, 20 x 18 x 16 in. Below right:
Fujiko Nakaya, Fog Bridge, 2013. 832 nozzles, 4 high-pressure pumps, 8 feeder
water lines, anemometer, and Max program, 150 ft.
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70 Sculpture 33.4
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morning fog elicits a nonchalant
and somewhat resigned acceptance
by residents, while tourists shiver
and mumble something profane
about sunny warm California as
they don newly purchased sweat-
shirts.
Fog Bridge forced viewers to stop
and pause for a moment and recon-
sider this seemingly relentless sum-
mer weather pattern, igniting the
romantic in us all. Children raced
back and forth across the bridge, gig-
gling with excitement, their hands
outstretched to catch the magical
mist that turned to water droplets in
their hands. Adults stood watching
with folded arms, mesmerized, wait-
ing for the next tantalizing burst.
Nakaya is no stranger to fog. She
has worked sculpturally with this
most ephemeral of materials for
more than 40 years, duplicating its
physical dynamics against dramatic
backdrops. Her first experience was
at the 1970 World Exposition in
Osaka, where she worked as part of
the artist team Experiments in Art
and Technology. Together with
Pasadena-based cloud physicist
Thomas Mee, she devised the tech-
nology that produced the very first
fog sculpture (Pepsi Pavilion, 1970).
The Osaka success led to a career-
long partnership between Nakaya
and Mee, who have produced many
similar installations, including the
dramatic Fog Sculpture #08025 (Gug -
genheim Bilbao, 1998).
The Exploratoriums Fog Bridge,
adjacent to the bustling promenade
of the Embarcadero, found a natural
home in a place where its role
as art was less defined. With no
ticket for admission, casual passersby
could discover the work without
appointment. It was lighted at night
for extra drama. Fog Bridge was just
the first in a series of new works
to be commissioned by the Explo -
ratorium as part of its Over the
Water public art program, though
one could easily imagine it as a per-
manent piece.
In 1919, poet Carl Sandburg wrote
his famous evocation of fog: The
fog comes on little cat feetand then
moves on. Nakayas fog, in contrast,
charged in on blasts of synchronized
computer software, but, like Sand -
burgs, it too moved on.
Donna Schumacher
WAsMt Ws1oW, 0t
Sam Scharf
Flashpoint Gallery and Martin
Luther King, Jr. Memorial Library
In Sam Scharfs two-part exhibition
Nothing is the Same, two decon-
structed telescopes, encased in soft,
transparent rubber, were mounted
in the windows of two separate
buildings and trained on each other,
inviting the curious to make a visual
connection across G Street NW. The
title can be taken to refer to Scharfs
consistently inconsistent approach
to materials. Each object in this bifur -
cated show was singular in appear-
ance and medium.
Growth seemingly erupted from
the floor of the Martin Luther King,
Jr. Library. The irregularly shaped,
fractured surfaces of its drywall pan-
els were covered in a vinyl photo
print that matched the lobbys ter-
razzo floor. The constructionsimilar
in size to a garden shed, featured
gaps that allowed viewers to peer
Above: Sam Scharf, Artworker, 2013. Mason twine on steel mesh, 120 x 27 in.
Below: Sam Scharf, Nothing Left Behind (Love Letter to DC), 2002. Paint and
moss on particle board, 30 x 36 x 36 in.
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into the chaotic structure of the
interior, lit by a single lamp. These
echoes of the librarys marble floor
and fluorescent lights showed Scharfs
strategic connection between his
sculpture and the sleek interior of
the Mies van der Rohe-designed
space.
Nothing Left Behind (Love Letter
to DC), installed across the street,
formed a companion piece. A pen-
tagonal dodecahedron, painted neon
orange and covered in fake moss,
this mysterious object had the scale
and surface appearance of a Star Trek
(first generation) propthe type
of space age-y, low-tech, geometric
object that disrupts the crews equi-
librium, or in this case, the viewers.
Much of Scharfs work is about dis-
rupting expectationsfor instance,
the video The Beholder, whose title
seems to imply beauty, but whose
imagery depicts flies buzzing around
a pile of dog droppings. Perhaps a
sly homage to Paul McCarthys scat-
ological obsession, The Beholder
might also indicate that an artists
aesthetic is all encompassing. Indeed,
all of Scharfs objects demonstrated
his humoring of the viewer with
art world references and an intention
not to repeat himself in any way.
Using a construction workers
methods and materials, Scharf
tends to deconstruct as often as he
constructs. A stack of fractured par-
ticleboard was hidden in an architec-
tural niche at Flashpoint. Another
work, You Could Make That, had the
appearance of a punched-in piece of
drywall, the fist-sized hole glowing
orange with LED lights. Untitled,
Unnoticed was an art world inside
joke: the floor-to- ceiling column
of concrete cylinders undoubtedly
went unnoticed by many people,
mistaken for a dun-colored pillar. The
elegant, unobtrusive appearance of
the cast segments belied their ori-
gins in plastic water bottle molds.
Several other works also used text
to make art insider asides. In One in
the Same, a logo-like arrangement
of letters cut from white plywood
could be deciphered as the word
ART overlaid with GOD. And in
Artworker, steel mesh was woven
with colored twine to form an
imperfect palindrome, visible as a
web cutting into the space and as
words projected in shadow on the
wall. Art work metamorphosed,
line by line, into work the art, art
maker, make, the work, until
concluding with work art. Together,
they formed an apt meta-thesis for
Scharf, an art worker who constantly
challenges viewers and materials
into new relationships.
Laura Roulet
toWcosb, MAssAcMust11s
Michio Ihara
Concord Art Association
The usual downside of minimal art
is that, after the initial impact, theres
very little to hold ones visual atten-
tion. Michio Ihara confounds that
flaw. Though his work appears simple
and disciplinedand minimal
even his static pieces offer a great
deal to engage the eye and the
intellect. Over a four-decade-long
career, the Paris-born Japanese-
American has married aesthetics,
engineering, mathematical design,
and beautiful materials in works
installed all over the globe. Iharas
recent retrospective, Looking Back,
Looking Forward, sampled this vast
oeuvre. As part of the show, Concord
Art provided a bus tour around the
Boston area to visit five of the sculp-
tors larger works, some public, some
private.
Although Iharas touch is readily
recognizable, it is impossible to nail
down one adjective that character-
izes his work. Love and respect for
his materials is paramount. Some of
the work is kinetic, some is not. Huge
public pieces for atria and plazas are
as meticulously engineered as one-
foot-square wall pieces. Yet there
is something more, an unerring eye,
an infallible sense of the relation-
ship of components.
This exquisite aesthetic balance
was evident 40 years ago in his first
major commission, which he received
when he was a young research
associate in the architecture depart-
ment at MIT. For an atrium wall
in an office building in nearby Walt -
ham, Ihara assembled scores of cop-
per plates, each one a foot square,
standing out like small flags from
the wall. The first subtlety is that
they are angledfrom either side,
the components appear massed in
the middle; from head-on, they are
massed at the sides. A second detail
is the working of each copper plate,
painted with flux and heat in
abstract bursts. A third is a pattern
of grooves in the cement wall, which
complements but does not repeat
the design of the plates, like a bass
line beneath a melody.
In the gallery, one of Iharas older
works, Clavichord, also evoked music;
tiny brass squares on a wire grid
Top: Michio Ihara, Wind Wind Wind,
1973. Stainless steel, 25 x 20 x 8 ft.
Right: Michio Ihara, Wind Cubes, 2005.
Stainless steel, 15 x 12.5 x 12 ft.
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72 Sculpture 33.4
teased the eye like the notes of a
Gregorian composition. Larger works
were represented by maquettes:
Wind Tree, erected in a plaza in New
Zealand, is a bold structure of many
straight wires that appear off-center,
as if blasted by a hurricane. These
big pieces rely on geometries that
echo the design of bridges.
In between these two styles are
versions of Wind Cubes, exhibiting
less finesse and, to my eye, less elo-
quence than Iharas wind vanes.
Hard to describe, the vanes are glit-
tering metallic strips, usually stain-
less steel, set in a grid, with long
arched tails balancing them on the
opposite sides of the grid. They move
in the wind like rippling waves
or rustling leaves. Never ceasing to
experiment, Ihara has recently begun
making sculpture with linear scrolls,
both static and kinetic. Hes 87, and
far from finished.
What is the ingredient that distin-
guishes the merely decorative from
fine art? The only answer is you
know it when you see it. And you see
it in Iharas work.
Marty Carlock
6Asst soW, Ntw osK
Lorrie Fredette
The Riverside Galleries at Garrison
Art Center
Lorrie Fredette, a leading installation
artist and sculptor working in the
Hudson Valley, is down with dis-
easeor, at least, its representation.
Her recent site-specific installation
Implementation of Adaptation con-
sists of a structured, mosquito egg-
like raft of wax-made pandemics,
abstracted, microbial, moist, and
poised for dissemination.
Through this installation, Fredette
offers an evasive account of the epi-
demiology of mosquito-borne dis-
eases, now more frequent and pos-
sibly more devastating in our wet
and warming Earth. Made out of
beeswax and resin filling in wood
and steel armatures, neutral looking
and suspended about three feet or
so off the floor, the objects hang
together nigh-uniformly like an air-
borne flotilla now resting, now set
to sail off and plague.
The work is singularly itself. A
gallery-occupying thing, it points to
other things, but does not invoke
mimesis; instead, the objects resist
disclosing their secrets. And those
secrets arrive en masse. No single
molecule-shaped object makes the
work, just as no one victim makes
a pandemic. Though each object is a
phrase in response to an unanswer-
able question, its all about what
clusters where and with what else.
And like sentences or graven images,
each object evades relationship
to its hard-to- countenance original
seen under a microscopea reflec-
tion on how diseases mutate and
mask their decoded heritage. To look
at something is already to not know
where it is and what it might have
been doing in the recent past or
what it might do just a moment on.
Fredettes investigation into the
history and physiology of disease, the
data that supports its representa-
tion, and its relationship to our con-
temporary environment poses the
question of how one can materially
and sensually representwithout
being didacticthe fact of our chang-
ing climate and its subsequent bio-
logical effects on, say, mosquito
populations and on us. Her tentative,
wax-made answer subverts much
of the specifics of her research pro-
gram and suggests that the facts
arent entirely recoverable. All that
remains is the brute world, and
all that we can do is feel around it,
sensing something slightly amiss.
Walking into the installation, I was
felled by a smell that I could have
sworn came from the waxy curiosa
of some Victorian medical cabinet
a signal that the work isnt just
some object lesson about a moment
in the history of epidemiological
disasters. Nor is it a tutorial about
the use and abuse of wax and metal
armatures. Implementation of Adapt -
a tion points to and goes beyond the
necessary features of any artwork
that might claim to be about the
world. It works on both the mind
and the senses and puts memory
into play, like a stolid search func-
tion roaming for clues to its use and
meaning.
Faheem Haider
Ntw osK
Emil Lukas
Sperone Westwater
Something mysterious, cosmic, and
deep radiates from Emil Lukass
thread compositions. At times, these
works (as large as 78 by 96 inches)
appear to be flat. From a distance,
they have aurasas though we are
witnessing space in slow motion
and seeing into and through vast
distances. Close up, we think we
can see the mechanicsthousands
of threads of different colors pulled
taut at opposite sides over a rectan-
gular box of wood. Closer inspec-
tion, however, reveals that there is
Above and detail: Lorrie Fredette,
Implementation of Adaptation, 2013.
Beeswax, tree resin, muslin, brass,
nylon line, steel, and wood, 6.08 x 36
x 12 ft.
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no discernable pattern; the colors
cross each other in all directions.
How did the artist invent this way of
working? How does he achieve ethe-
real effects? How long does this
obsessive way of composing take?
Even though Lukas calls his com-
positions paintings, they consist
of three-inch-deep wooden boxes
painted white inside. He works by
putting the boxes on sawhorses,
inserting small nails into the sides,
and then stringing polyester thread
in different directions across the
open end of the box. His process is
slowhe tests the effect of every
thread and hue. He calls the works
with lighter centers hums and the
works with vertical threads cur-
tains. Once hung, each work plays
with its light sources. For example,
skylights create shadows inside the
boxes behind the thread lines.
Indirect light creates aura effects in
the centers.
In the small, very dense Heavy Gas
(2013), an ovoid or head-like central
shape appears beneath the blend
of mostly darker threads. The threads
were spray-painted from behind to
achieve the fuzzy effect. Neatly
looped over the 18 or so nails on
each side, the threads form a zigzag
pattern on the wood. Around the
lighter central area, red, green, and
other hues are layered with deep
blue threads on top. In Red Gas
(2013), a lighter central orb physi-
cally under the over-layers appears
to come forward. Inside the red lay-
ers, many hues are present.
When I met Lukas at the gallery,
he told me, The needle and thread
is, for me, the perfect visual and
structural tool due to its pictorial
line and structural function. Im
looking for the smallest visual mark
that has the greatest impact. In the
catalogue accompanying the show,
he notes: The paintings, due to
their radial structure, are not on one
plane. The depth from the front of
the field of color to the white back
is about three inches. The space in
between is what I mean by atmos-
phere. Thread paintings engage with
density, color reflection, opacity,
or translucence very much like an
atmosphere does as light travels
through it.
Jan Garden Castro
tt Wct WWA1t
Ana England and Steven Finke
Alice F. and Harris K. Weston
Art Gallery
Imminence, a joint exhibition of
work by Ana England and Steven
Finke, dealt with those certainties we
spend much of our lives hoping are
not imminent. The resulting work
contemplated the beauty inherent in
the cycle of life and death. England
and Finke, who are husband and
wife, collaborated on the entry piece
to the show. Bier with Shroud stood
13 feet high in the stairwell leading
to the lower-level galleries, where
their individual shows appeared. Sup -
ported by four handsomely curved
metal legs, an airy suggestion of
a casket was covered by a drapery
made from the hair of England and
her sisters. Only something as insub-
stantial as a swallow could be carried
to its grave in this elegant equipage,
but its symbolism is rich.
Finke, whose work occupied the
west gallery, is an artist who under-
stands curves and uses them to
advantage. In Ocular Sclera, hung
from the ceiling at eye level, one
not only saw the handsome metal
disk but looked through its open
center at the surprising sight of a
partial skeleton of a leaping dog
mounted in its own slim metal cir-
cle. Looking the other way through
Ocular Sclera revealed Bier.
Finkes portion of the show was
titled Peaceful and Wrathful
Deities, and several works incorpo-
rated figures of the Buddha. Stain -
less steel, bronze, and copper
appeared frequently, though perhaps
the most striking individual work
was Deer, the skeleton of an antlered
buck, seemingly balanced on a
metal ball but leaping forward, an
arrow held between its teeth. Would
we catch deaths arrow if we could?
Yes, of course, but the evidence
suggests that such a feat would not
keep us from becoming skeletons.
Finkes use of metals is sure and
skillful, his work undeniably beauti-
ful. It is also a trigger to thought.
England brings her own capabilities
to entirely different materials, and
in the east gallery, her works contin-
ued the conversation. Elegy, seven
Above: Emil Lukas, Heavy Gas, 2013.
Thread over wood frame with nails,
16 x 14 x 3.5 in. Right: Steven Finke,
Shade, 2012. Stainless steel, bronze,
copper, and dog skeleton, 66 x 36
x 60 in.
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felted wool hangings supported by
bronze pins, could be read from left
to right. White elements increasingly
disintegrated, like the red swathes
on which they hung; as these
elements faded, the black beneath
became dominant. In other felted
and spun wool works, England ran a
line in contrasting colors, suggesting
perhaps a timeline, a lifeline, a con-
tinuance that has an end. She also
used felted wool in a series of five
effigy-like figures, ranging in color
from dark to light to white.
Englands sure hand in ceramics
was seen in Witness, an over-life-
size figure of a woman impaled by
bronze pins. In contrast to the solid
heft of Witness, the video Exhale
presented the silhouette of a woman
illuminated by constant upward
movement of what seemed to be
gaseous substances.
England and Finke collaborated
once before on a show for the Wes -
ton Gallery, in 1997. That exhibition,
Creation Stories, explored lifes
beginnings. Now, some years on,
they have considered the opposite
end of the story. Their various skills
make the contemplation worth-
while from both artistic and philo-
sophical viewpoints.
Jane Durrell
t 11ssussM
Detroit: Artists in Residence
Mattress Factory
After visiting Detroit in fall 2012,
Barbara Luderowski and Michael
Olijnyk, co- curators of Detroit:
Artists in Residence, recognized a
kinship between what artists were
doing there and the Mattress Fac -
torys mission to encourage experi-
mentation and risk-taking. This
exhibition, featuring the results of a
two-city collaboration, was an appro-
priate choice to celebrate the 35th
anniversary of an institution whose
founders pioneered Pittsburghs
North Side when it was segregated
and rampant with criminal and drug
activity. Detroit and Pittsburgh are
part of the same dying industrial fab-
ric, though the latter has discovered
a way to survive despite the loss of
its steel industry.
The exhibition was also a timely
counter-measure to all of the bad
news coming from Detroit, the once
successful capitol of the auto indus-
try now reduced to bankruptcy and
a symbol of economic gloom. A
booming metropolis in 1950, with
nearly two million people, today
Detroit has shrunk to a population of
less than 700,000. Though emer-
gency manager Kevyn Orr might call
blight one of the citys most perva-
sive and pressing problems, the
Mattress Factory exhibition did not
focus on the dark side; instead, it
presented edgy new endeavors by
four artists and two collaboratives
Design 99, Jessica Frelinghuysen,
Scott Hocking, Nicola Kuperus, Adam
Lee Miller, Russ Orlando, and Frank
Pahlthat find strength and inspira-
tion in socio-economic ruin.
Scott Hockings Coronal Mass Ejec -
tion, in the crypt-like lower gallery,
applied his interest in the mysteries
of religion, archaeology, and science
to industrial relics. The multi-layered
amalgamation of forms seemed
to have been designed for some type
of private ritual. A replica of a rusted,
35-foot-long, hot metal train car (a
so-called torpedo, used to transport
molten iron across the Monongahela
River) dominated the space, framed
by religious mannequins and trans-
fixed statuary of humans wearing
animal-like masks.
Frank Pahls nostalgic 1913 Revis -
ited in Three Parts 1. The Assembly
Line, 2. Global Time Synchronization
and, 3. Rite of Spring Premiere trans-
ported viewers back to a by -
gone mechanical age and served as
a reminder of when Henry Ford
unleashed the assembly line as his
contribution to modernity. This sur-
real, sound-filled setting was peace-
ful, though it distorted ones sense
of time with its fluctuating lights,
odd shadows, dangling mechanical
devices, and outdated instruments.
Uncanny dislocations pervaded
Nicola Kuperus and Adam Lee Millers
Diptyching. Viewers confronted a
bewildering and destabilizing experi-
ence in the form of a stage-like
faade. Timed, rotating lights added
to the disorientation. In this psycho-
logical game, the artists offered the
semblance of a recognizable struc-
ture but then filled its interior with
unsettling sounds. As in a horror
movie, one heard hammers, electric
saws, and human screams. Viewers
who passed through the neo-Federal-
style doors found an artful pile
of construction debris and a full-wall
video projection showing the artists
Left: Ana England and Steven Finke, Bier with Shroud, 2013. Stainless steel,
bronze, and human hair, 156 x 80 x 54 in. Above: Ana England, installation
view with (left to right) Elegy, Witness, and Condition, 2013.
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building the faade, watching it fall,
and taking it apart.
Jessica Frelinghuysens interactive
My City is Your City offered a portrait
of the years she spent in Hamtramck,
Michigan, a two-square-mile city
nearly surrounded by Detroit. The
installation filled a room with tree-
like structures built from found wood
and tin cans that viewers could hold
up to their ears. There were train
sounds, excerpts from a live music
performance, and people sharing
stories about their lives in this envi-
ronment. Sound-Collecting Suit and
Backpack consisted of the blue uni-
form that she wore while collecting
the sounds and a backpack with her
audio recording equipment.
Russ Orlandos mysterious blue-lit
Cured read as a shamans attempt
to heal a dying city. There was some-
thing of the curehouse in this instal-
lation, but rather than cuts of meat,
auto parts hung on hooks from the
ceiling, their metal encrusted with
salt depicting various stages
of preservation and decomposition.
This diverse but unified exhibition,
teeming with multiple ideas and
inventive fabrications, offered viewers
new insights into Detroits complex
history.
Elaine A. King
osK, tWWstvAWt A
Andi Steele and Carol Prusa
York College of Pennsylvania
Andi Steeles Emanate, an ephem -
eral installation of taut monofila-
ment lines, transformed space into
shimmering reflections and hovering
shadows. Carol Prusas Liminal
Worlds, a group of highly detailed
acrylic hemispheres that clung
tightly to the walls, also asserted
an influence on their surroundings,
though their effect was more subtle.
By choosing to situate the works of
two such seemingly different artists
in adjacent galleries, York College
Gallery director Matthew Clay-
Robison created a dynamic energy
that revealed surprising similarities
of vision.
Walking into Emanate engaged our
sense of spatial perception. It felt dis-
orienting, even dizzying. There was
no solid point, just the vision of gen-
tly curving, diaphanous green lines.
But the curves were an illusion, just
like the color. The clear monofila-
ment was strung in grids across an
octagonal room, creating flat planes
that angled and intersected in com-
puter-derived patterns. Presented
with the challenge of designing an
installation for an unusually shaped
room, Steele was also given the
opportunity to choose the color. Sat -
urated green engulfed the space, as
spotlights created glowing and
sparkling reflections offset by shad-
ows of darker green on the walls.
Impossible to appreciate from only
one vantage point, Emanate had
to be experienced from multiple posi-
tions. It was only by bending and
crawling under the monofilament
strands that the real impact of the
work became apparent. There was no
longer a reference point for the self,
as perceptions of light, line, and
shadow kept changing. The sense of
being both caged and free suggested
infinite possibilities in the universe.
Emanate was about breathing out,
and breathing inand the ability
to both alter and be altered by that
experience.
Across the hallway, Carol Prusas
domes extended their presence into
surrounding space. Prusa focuses on
the surface treatment of the forms,
and each hemisphere is layered with
designs rendered in silverpoint,
Left: Russ Orlando, Cured, 2013. Auto
parts, salt, chain, meat hooks, metal,
porcelain, school bell, Plexiglas, and
mixed media, installation view. Below:
Scott Hocking, Coronal Mass Ejec -
tion, 2013. Fiberglass, wood, steel,
iron, rust, slag, coke, dirt, stone, tex-
tiles, lamps, and mixed media, instal-
lation view. Both from Detroit.
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76 Sculpture 33.4
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graphite, aluminum leaf, and acrylic
wash, punctuated by pinpricks
of blinking fiber optic lights. The
imagery is patterned and controlled,
with delicate designs suggesting
natural forms, Islamic ornamental
motifs, and kaleidoscopic abstrac-
tions. Using symmetry as an orga-
nizing principle, Prusa invites viewers
to go beyond the artistic and spiri-
tual traditions informing her work
and succumb to the allure of its
underlying beauty. The intricate
imagery of Bridge suggests flowers
and chakras, implying an energy
flowing throughout, while Omphalos
feels more open, with large textured
spaces that unevenly reflect ambi-
ent light. Each dome appears as a
fully formed and self-contained uni-
verse. The only anomalous element
was the occasional inclusion of small
videos, whose immediacy detracted
from the painstaking traditional
processes characterizing the rest of
the work.
Underlying the works of both
artists is a commitment to structure
as a means of slowing down the
world and creating a moment of
reflectionwhether by participating
in an experience or taking the time
to really look for what cannot be
seen.
Leslie Kaufman
MtMMt s
Terri Phillips
TOPS Gallery
The pairing of a live bottom-feeder
with bursts of natural sunlight
reflected from above was just one
example of the paradoxes inherent
in both Terri Phillipss installation
Chapel of Yes and its unique setting.
Mississippi River catfish are a noc-
turnal, prehistoric-looking species
that scour the muddy river sub-
strate for morsels to feed on, often
organisms long dead. Unlike most
fish, they sink rather than float
because of their weighty bone struc-
ture. The catfish, then, seems an
appropriate mascot for an installa-
tion and gallery space searching for
meaning and transcendence at the
bottom.
TOPS, which opened in 2012, is
located in the basement of a his-
toric building in downtown Mem -
phis, just one block from the
Mis sis sippi River. To find the space,
visitors wander down rickety
wooden steps and through a storage
basement stocked full of salvage
industrial equipment, printshop
materials, and old furniturefor-
gotten relics waiting for repurpos-
ing. At the farthest, and lowest, end
of the building, a former coal storage
room has been transformed into a
space for the display of art.
Entering a doorway widened with
a sledgehammer, the coal-encrusted
walls fell away as Chapel of Yes
induced reverence. The experience
began with a gleaming white epoxy
floor that encouraged visitors to
remove their shoes before they even
realized the hallowed nature of the
Above: Carol Prusa, Bridge, 2012.
Silverpoint, graphite, and titanium
white pigment on curved acrylic with
lights, 60 x 60 x 12 in. Below and
detail: Andi Steele, Eman ate, 2013.
Monofilament, 119 sq. ft.
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work. Although the floor is a perma-
nent fixture of the gallery, for this
installation, it functioned to invert
norms of high and low; the spotless
surface associated purity with what
was underfootthe ground of life
itself, rather than the disconnected
firmament above. A white, wooden
pew for two, a sacred loveseat,
faced a minimal high altar with an
aquarium embedded in it. A foot-
long catfish peacefully glided along
the bottom, oblivious to its new sta-
tus as a holy icon. Directly above
the altar, recessed into the wall and
sloping down from the ceiling, a con-
crete chute opened into the space.
Accessed through a manhole from
the street outside, it originally func-
tioned to deposit the coal burned
to heat the building. Like everything
else in this basement, however, it
had been repurposedor better yet
rebornto wield an alternative
energy. Phillips removed the man-
hole cover and applied silver-leaf to
the interior of the chute, allowing
the sun at its highest point to
reflect its stunning brightness down
into the room and create an indus-
trial stained-glass window.
To the left of the altar, a miniature
staircase led three feet up from the
white floor to where the catfish
lounged. As a symbol of ascension,
the stairs functioned to connect the
rituals of the chapel to the altar and
subsequently to the enlightenment
just above. However, if any statement
were to be found in the installation
or the gallery itself, it was that these
moments of transcendence are more
apt to originate within the rough-
hewn walls of history than with the
present, built up from the depths,
where dark memories slowly make
their way into the light.
Todd M. Richardson
StA11tt
Joseph McDonnell
Abmeyer + Wood
Joseph McDonnell is a widely exhib-
ited and commissioned Modernist
sculptor who moved to Seattle in
1998 from New York. From Amulet
to Monument, his recent survey
exhibition, covered work from 1971
to the present, concentrating on
smaller-scale pieces, maquettes,
pedestal sculptures, and two glass
chandeliers. Executed mostly in fab-
ricated bronze or stainless steel, the
21 objects provided an opportunity
for viewers to trace the evolution of
his work before and after his studies
at the Fine Arts Academy in Florence
and at the Harvard School of Design,
where he briefly studied architec-
ture.
The exhibition was supported by
an earlier publication with essays
by dealer Andre Emmerich, sculp-
ture photographer David Finn, and
critic Donald Kuspit. They set McDon -
nell in a mid-century modern tradi-
tion that includes David Smith,
Anthony Caro, George Sugarman,
and Frank Stella, all of whose works
are reflected in McDonnells. Setting
a model for an artists monograph,
McDonnell helped out with a long
autobiographical essay and anno-
tated captions for each color plate.
Bearing in mind that McDonnells
most successful works are large-scale
outdoor sculptures, often commis-
sions (13 in Seattle; 23 elsewhere),
the show focused on the origins of
such works. One could easily see, as
Kuspit points out, that the paradox
of McDonnells sculptures is that they
seem to be falling apart and coming
together simultaneously. Hurricane
II and III (both 2010) alternately lean
and tilt, only to upright themselves
with strong vertical rods. Kandinsky
(1995) and Schools Out (2013) also
veer precariously, especially the latter
bronze, which balances seven inter-
secting elements on a single foot.
Surfaces are more chromatically var-
ied than in the bigger works, with
blue, green, orange, brown, and
black patinas. Katonah I and II (both
1971), however, have a darker, green-
ish-black matte coloring over inter-
secting flat surfaces on the same
plane in which a frame turns the
sculpture into an exciting picture,
as Kuspit puts it.
Sculpture in the round and flat-
tened, front-and-back compositions
are two of McDonnells primary for-
mal themes. Locking Piece I (2011)
and III (2012) puncture a flattened
circle by interlocking two C-shaped
segments mounted on a narrow
plinth. The bronze Chinese Bracelet
(2000) also embraces circularity, but
with deeply faceted ridges.
The maquettes Irish Gates (2002)
and Hurricane Gates (2012) relate
to McDonnells masterpiece, Second
Gates of Paradise (2002), a monu-
Left: Terri Phillips, Chapel of Yes, 2013.
Wood, water, sand, catfish, silver leaf,
paint, and paraffin wax, dimensions
variable. Below: Joseph McDonnell,
Hurricane Gates, 2012. Bronze with
wood base, 10 x 27 x 5.5 in.
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78 Sculpture 33.4
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mental two-part security gate for
the home of Microsoft co-founder
Jon Shirley in Medina, Washington.
Though these second gates were
inspired by Ghibertis baptistery
doors in Florence, one tends to agree
more with Emmerichs assessment of
the works evok[ing] giant boulders
strewn across the site than Kuspits
seeing them as metaphors for salva-
tion or at least express[ing] faith
in its possibility. Viewers could easily
judge for themselves by examining
the more intimate and compara-
tively minute versions for the later,
larger outcomes.
Matthew Kangas
loWboW
Emma Hart
Camden Arts Centre
Emma Harts Dirty Looks is a kinky
office nightmare. Inspired by her
time working in a call center, her
installation presents a garish Kafka-
esque environment in which photo-
copiers spit out to-do lists and
glossy eroticized images of the nat-
ural world, some of which are fash-
ioned into a phallic, bucket-headed
totem. Filing cabinets, clipboards,
and even a water cooler are covered
in creepy ceramic tongues. These
wet-look, fleshy creations slop,
poke, and slither their way through
the whole installation, holding up
sheets of ceramic paper, dangling
from canteen trays, and even stand-
ing in for the spout of a water jug.
The insistence on the tongue calls
to mind Mikhail Bakhtins theory of
grotesque realism, which has
often been pressed into the service
of art criticism. Tongues occupy a
liminal space. They are at a point of
entry to and exit from the body
the mouth an anxious orifice
because it questions what is inside
and what is outside, destabilizing
our sense of self and non-self. One
of the installations video elements
features a series of gaping-mouthed
gargoyles in a surreal parody of
a police line-up: No, not that one;
no, definitely not, intones a bored
voice. In fact, the tongues are the
starting point for the whole work
the fiberboard office furniture surro-
gates came out of the plinth
problem, namely how to display the
tongues.
The soundtracks from the video
elements create an uncomfortable
cacophony. The bleeps and pops
made by computers to tell us that
they have completed an action
compete with a deeply unsettling
and persistent human cough.
Coughing on this scale is frightening,
calling to mind choking or strug-
gling for breath. There is an omi-
nous sense of being out of control
throughout the work. Hart is not
an artist to offer neat, tidy solutions:
she revels in the grubby, the spilt,
the broken (she includes dud or
broken ceramic works in the drawers
of the units).
In fact, a dark sense of humor
suffuses the work. An esophagus-
shaped mirror reflects an unseen
monitor atop one of the plinths-
cum-office-furnishings. The screen
shows a crudely fashioned set
of teeth, yellowed with highlighter
pen, which enunciate aphorisms of
office culture: You are being held
in a queue, Im at your service,
I dont understand what youre say-
ing, Can you run through it
again? And then it repeats, with
a knowing nod to both psychology
and visual culture: Ive hit a blind
spot, Ive hit a blind spot, Ive hit a
blind spot
Dirty Looks represents a world per-
haps best described by C.S. Lewis in
the Screwtape Letters: I live in the
Managerial Age in a world of
Admin. The greatest evil is not now
done in those sordid dens of crime
that Dickens loved to paint But
it is conceived and ordered (moved,
seconded, carried, and minuted) in
clean, carpeted, warmed, and well-
lighted offices. Hart dirties this san -
itized hell, ridiculing it with a saucy
poke of the tongue.
Jonathan R. Jones
Above: Joseph McDonnell, Second
Gates of Paradise, 2002. Bronze, 25 x
8 x 6 ft. Right and detail: Emma Hart,
Dirty Looks, 2013. Ceramic and mixed
media, 2 views of installation.
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Kalliopi Lemos
Ioakimion Greek High School
for Girls
We arrived breathless after several
flights of ruinous brick stairs to find
in an abandoned Greek school for
girls overlooking Istanbuls Golden
Hornan installation of hybrid
women/animal sculptures that left
usbreathless. Mutilated, human-
size figures appeared against the
peeling blue paint of halls and class-
rooms, accompanied by a soundtrack
of girls chattering and singing, just
as they might have done when
school was in session. White pages
on the desks bore baleful stories
of womens abuserapes, beatings,
traffickings. A young woman escort-
ing me gasped and said, Incredible.
The figures, made from steel filings
mixed with resin and sand, then
sandblasted and oxidized, appeared
dark and granulated, but this surface
roughness was countered by sinuous-
ness. Two figures, Deer on Altar
and Hen with Two Faces, looked out
vacantly at eye level; Hen on
Crutches and Mermaid Coming out of
a Well were headless; Hanging Hare
was suspended by a noose; Goat and
Memory were missing body parts.
Kalliopi Lemoss installation, collec-
tively titled I Am I, Between Worlds
and Between Shadows, was resonant
with meanings to the point of pro-
ducing dissonance. The photocopied
white pages jarred with an epic and
theatrical tone. The keen pathos
of crime against women is not the
same as the pathos of Istanbuls for-
mer Greek community, preserved by
the generosity of Turkish conqueror
Sultan Mehmet in 1453 only to be
driven out by riots 500 years later.
In a catalogue essay, Curator Beral
Madra told us that Lemos, a Greek
island-born, London-based artist,
loves myth, and also that it can be
hard to tell whether her figures are
victims or assailants. Experiences like
those recounted on the white pages
may have traumatized them, turned
them into victims (like Leda, changed
into a swan, or Daphne, changed into
a tree), and caused their deformities,
which in time will disillusion the
singing girls. Others have been
turned into sacrifices (like Iphigenia),
as in Deer on Altar or in Bridge
of Alta, whose accompanying white-
page story recounts a masons wife
immured in a stone bridge to arrest
its collapse. On the other hand, for
figures with more aggressive aspects
(like the frenzied Maenads around
Dionysus or the Gorgon Medusa),
deformities somehow become their
source of strength and not only sur-
vivors scars.
Lemoss installation suggested
such narratives ambivalently while
sustaining its own narrative, one in
which the immediacy of seeing was
in tension with tortured hesitations
between abjection and reclaimed
power. A similar intensity also char-
acterized parts of the 13th Istanbul
Biennial, running concurrently
across the Golden Horn.
Michel Oren
Above left: Kalliopi Lemos, Hanging Hare, 2013, 130 x 60 x 284 cm. Right: Kalliopi Lemos, Deer on Altar, 2013, 126 x 67
x 131 cm. Below: Kalliopi Lemos, Goat, 2013, 184 x 48 x 213.7 cm. All made of steel filings, fiberglass, and mild steel.
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Founded in 2004 as the first regional chapter of the International Sculpture
Center (ISC), Chicago Sculpture International (CSI) is open to any ISC mem-
bersculptor, individual, or organization. Its regular meetings bring techni-
cal, critical, and business-related information to members. CSI maintains
a strong record of organizing professional exhibitions, attracting significant
guest speakers and sponsoring sculpture-related events. The Chicago Sculp-
ture International 2014 Biennial, Invoking the Absence, runs from May 17
through July 14, 2014 in Chicagos Beaux-Arts-style Elks National Memorial.
Curator Lucas Antony Cowan selected works by 22 artists that play with
notions of the void in space, time, spiritualism, life, order, and abstraction.
More information about the show and Chicago Sculpture International is
available at <www.chicagosculpture.org>
Over the years, the definition of sculpture community at the ISC has evolved, thanks to the Internet, social media,
and other emerging technologies. While the community has broadened geographically, it has also become more
defined with the help of ISC Chapters. In addition to being local voices for the ISC, these multifaceted organizations
foster and build a sense of community in their respective regions. The hard work of these committed individuals and
the programs and opportunities they offer are key to their success.
Pacific Rim Sculptors is the newest ISC Chapter. PRS began with six California Bay Area sculptors in 1988, serving
as a means to meet, exchange ideas, and exhibit work. Today, it is a member-run, nonprofit organization with Charles
H. Stinson as the current chair (Lynne Todaro served as the previous chair); Leitha Thrall as treasurer, and Anya Behn
as administrator. Members include college professors and professional sculptors, as well as individuals in second
careers, beginning artists, and students. Members work in a full range of materials, from traditional to new media,
including digital and kinetic forms. Many of the members are also highly accomplished in other art forms. PRS
educational activities include tours of major art collections, in-residence programs, and foundries. Although most
members are from California, the group welcomes sculptors from other areas. More information is available at
<www.PacRimSculptors.org>.
80 Sculpture 33.4
isc PEOPLE, PLACES, AND EVENTS
Vol. 33, No. 4 2014. 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.
Left: Stephen Klassen, Shadow Becoming, 2013. Oil, acrylic, and India ink.
Right: Peter N. Gray, Reflecting Inner Beauty, 2013. Found wood, cast resin,
and gold leaf. Works by CSI members.
Left: All-members meeting at TSG member Ed Wilsons studio at Itchy Acres
in Houston. Right: TSG Member Erin Cunningham looking at Caprice
Pieruccis work at the Texas State Capitol in Austin, with Gary Webernicks
sculpture in the foreground.
I SC CHAPTERS: REDEFI NI NG SCULPTURE COMMUNI TY
Top: Kati Casida, RedWings, 2005.
Painted aluminum. Above: Mark
Malmberg, Hsiao Hua, 2014. Solar-
powered and mixed media robotic
mobile. Works by PRS members.
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Texas Sculpture Group keeps growing, with 111 members from across the
state and beyond. 2013 was a busy year for TSG, with a full line-up of exhibi-
tions and group gatherings. Events included a TSG Pop-up Show at Bill
FitzGibbons studio in San Antonio, Under the Rotunda at the State Capitol,
Fresh Dozen at Red Arrow Contemporary in Dallas, Process at ACC in
Austin, an all-members meeting at Ed Wilsons studio at Itchy Acres, and In-
Depth at the Art Car Museum in Houston. Later this year, James Surls will
curate A Panoramic View: The Texas Sculpture Group at the Lawndale Arts
Center in Houston. The show will be dedicated to the memory of Bert Long,
a legendary Texas sculptor, friend to many, and a founding member of the
Texas Sculpture Group. The exhibition will run August 22 through September
27, 2014. More information is available at <www.texassculpturegroup.org>.
sculpture
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