Untitled

2009 - Sculpture (Sculpture)

Jedediah Caesar

For Untitled, Caesar encased recycled objects such as scraps of plywood, paper or cloth in resin and then cut and reassembled the pieces into abstract forms. This technical rework allows for a clinical inspection of the material contents of the piece and the resulting slanted industrial monolith echoes minimalist sculpture, although with a different expressive texture. Indeed, Untitled can be seen as a contemporary pyramid with a painterly surface. Its transparency reveals that the base and the top have been created out of a single cast piece cleanly bisected into two fragments which were subsequently placed—as if in a mirror—so that both sides of the split are visible.

Jedediah Caesar is more interested in the materials and the process of making a work than in the actual final aesthetic product. Most of the time he begins with a collection of found objects, which he encases in resin, often using cardboard boxes as a molds. The resulting casts are then cut into blocks, flat slices and other shapes—cross-sections of the original objects that nullify their original function and form and transform them into a new kind of material. While the resulting geometric sculptures and the industrial process involved in making them may recall minimalist practices from the 1960s, Caesar’s “metaphorical rebirth” of the materials also gives them a strong, expressive abstract character.

Colors:

• material.n.01
• materiality.n.02
• procedure.n.01
• texture.n.01
• layer.v.01
• metaphysics.n.01
• cut/ripped
• decay
• found objects
• grotesque
• american