In Bodily Study of Unthinking Groups, Harrison combines two disparate materials into one stratified stack: automotive clay (used in detailing cars) forms the earthy base, while fragments of zebra skull become imbedded in this falsified soil. Harrison’s forged archeological artifact compresses two cultural contexts together: that of Africa, represented by the bleached zebra skull; and that of Detroit, the birthplace of the American car. Detroit’s Matthew Angelo Harrison works at the intersection of sculpture and technology, building his own 3D printers (which rise to the status of sculpture), and using these creations to formulate others.
Yang Song’s Die features a clay mask of the artist himself slowly dissolving into water. Clay returns to clay. Clay originates from and returns to earth, becoming a metaphor for life.
The sculpture shores shored (Working Title) makes reference to the human form. The two sides of the sculpture are distinctively different, with the rear showing an anamorphic-corrugated structure, the front suggesting the human form, making perhaps an unconscious reference to Giacometti or Barnett Newman. But whereas their work suggests immanence, Michael Dean refuses any notion of transcendence, remaining rooted in presentness .
Wang Xu’s video Summer Wind Before Rain was made during his residency last summer at Storm King, where he lived in a hut made of wood and gathered clay from the nearby forest. During his residency, he interacted only with the sculpture park’s gardener. In the eleven-minute video, we see the gardener ride a lawn mower the size of a golf cart, and we observe the artist slowly make a large, realistic bust of the gardener, bit by bit and layer of clay by layer.
Composed of two rectilinear pieces of glass, this work is part of a series of sculptures started in 2006. These transparent assemblages are in contact with the walls and floor of the exhibition space. The sculptures of this series are the same dimensions with different combinations.
Furthering Alexandra Pirici’s enquiry into the economy and circulation of artworks, Parthenon Marbles is an immaterial version of the sculptural ensemble embodied by five performers. This ongoing performative action presents and addresses the challenges in the financial and legal implications and value of the original sculptures as cultural capital. The original Parthenon Marbles are a collection of Classical Greek marble sculpture inscriptions and architectural pieces that were originally part of the temple of the Parthenon and other buildings in the Acropolis of Athens, Greece.
Landscape for fire is a major work by Anthony McCall. The film recounts a performance where characters in white, light up fires in a very orchestrated choreography of lights in a vast flat landscape. The performance is carefully planned – the fires are lit and geometrically aligned in a precise temporal progression.
Erin Shirreff’s A. P. series of prints investigates how objects are “constructed” at the level of the image. For each composite photograph, Shirreff fabricates two sculptural forms from what appear to be metal or plaster, although the precise materials are unidentified. Her sculptures resemble miniature architectural models or renderings of buildings as-yet-to-be fully conceptualized, both elemental and elegant in their use of sharp angles and clean lines.
A steel clothing rack adorned with turbine vents, Moroccan vintage jewelry, pinecones and knitting yarn, these heterogeneous elements are used here to create an exotic yet undefined identity within the work. Following Haegue Yang’s 2010 anthropomorphic series Medicine Men, this sculpture appears as a shamanic objet or being. It is mobile and can be activated.
Yang Song was trained as a sculptor in both Western and Eastern traditions, which continue to influence his practice today...
Detroit’s Matthew Angelo Harrison works at the intersection of sculpture and technology, building his own 3D printers (which rise to the status of sculpture), and using these creations to formulate others...
The performative work of Alexandra Pirici (b...
Michael Dean (b...
The artist Wang Xu works predominantly in sculpture and video installation...
Kitty Krauss has a very particular outlook on Minimal and Constructivist Art...