| |
The figurative tradition in sculpture is several millennia old, and contemporary artists continuing to produce human imagery face the inevitable challenge of making their work relevant or original. While respectfully accepting historical roots, I am attempting to extend that tradition, inspired by a notion advanced by art critic Donald Kuspit, who described sculpture as "metaphor-making in three dimensions". Because for me the human form remains a powerfully familiar and direct instrument of expression, I use figurative imagery comparatively in order to deepen my sense of the world, and hopefully that of my audience. Much like the childhood game of seeing images in passing clouds, I glean human form and gesture from myriad sources, among them tree and plant shapes, handwriting in general but especially Chinese calligraphy, elements of architecture, and other visual and performance arts, pre-eminently modern dance.
Sometimes a single figure comes to mind, one moving through time in a series of movements or perhaps one made airborne by other material means, oddly free and tethered at the same instant. Sometimes a group of figures takes shape in a repetitive, symmetrical rhythm or in decidedly asymmetrical composition. In any event, the degree of realism in my figures is ancillary to their role of being units of expression in a 3 dimensional metaphor, a comparison of the human form to something else. Some may say that this anthropomorphizing is an act of hubris ("humans are everywhere!"), but for me the relationship proffers humility and respect. If I make projections of a human image in something else, the act is not to take ownership of that something else but to express a belonging, a shared identity.
The human form is my metaphorical language, and I mean to speak that language in a manner more abstract than literal. Exotic arrangements of figures in space are not depictions of, say, circus performers, so much as reflections of what a piece of architecture might embody: tension, power, and balance. In varying degrees, external perception and internal reflection trigger the language of form. At times, there is an "aha" moment when, for instance, a vertical string of Chinese letters just becomes a tower of figures that needs to find its way into clay and ultimately bronze. Other sculptural ideas need a longer gestation in the mind and perhaps an even longer time on the drawing board ("how could I possibly make that stand up?") However a piece may come into being, the expressive potential of the human form remains, for me, endlessly compelling. |
|
