There is something to be said about sculpture which goes bigger and beyond the human scale. Working on a piece of art in which you literally need to be inside of it, encapsulated by it, consumed by it. Where your peripheral vision is completely besieged by what you are in the process of composing. I’ve always been pulled towards sculpture for its occupation of physical three dimensional space, it is not illusionary as in painting, but real and authentic as it is the space which we occupy.
The presence of sculpture has so much potential in its real space to connect with its audience on many different levels than other artistic practices simply in its presence and ability to go beyond superficial renderings of what space could be when it is manipulated on a two dimensional surface. Seeing my first Richard Sierras in real time opened me up once again to these conceptions. Literally engaging with these works through walking around and through them gives you a sense of space you do not encounter on a daily basis; or is it just that we don’t take the time to actually see as we mutter about our day, and we are just looking. Seeing and looking are two very different things.
As I slowly paced through the five considerable circular and spiral undulating 3” plate steel curved walls of Sierra’s sculpture installation at Dia: Beacon, his manipulation of space through the material of steel spoke to me. It opens and closes with the bends and curvatures of this seemingly unnameable manipulated material.
What I always enjoyed about the medium of steel was its forgiving nature. Cut something a little to short?-fill it with some extra weld bead. Not fitting quite right?-heat it up and smash it in place. But as the scale of sculpture grows, the ability for its forgiving nature diminishes. Sierra works in a process which is used for the fabrication of ships, tweaking his bends on multi tonne sheets of steel is no easy endeavour.
When I look to the works of John Chamberlain, also at Dia: Beacon, who brings together his bent and twisted sculptural works with a painting process as well, all I can think of is how he had to move his sculptures around in order to get the paint to drip in the appropriate direction. Working in this scale demands SPACE, and lots of it. Not to mention specialized equipment. I imagine Chamberlain in a huge warehouse with hoists and chains tilting and rotating these works, positioning them just right, to render upon his twisted and bent surfaces.
When I compare these works to Sierra's it seems like polar opposites are at play. While Sierra opens and closes space to us as we interact with his works, I feel like Chamberlain presents a sense of space which is folded in on itself.
One thing is for sure, the earth works artist Michael Heizer, also at Dia articulates it best: "It is interesting to build a sculpture that attempts to create an atmosphere of awe. Small works are said to do this but it is not my experience. Immense, architecturally sized sculpture creates both the object and the atmosphere. Awe is a state of mind equivalent to religious experience, I think if people feel commitment they feel something has been transcended." For my current research this is where I need to situate myself, there is only one thing left to do, go BIG. Don't think about where it's going to be stored, or exhibited, or how I'm going to get it from a) to b), just make with this sentiment at the forefront of my mind. This is the only way I can make what needs to be done.
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