Category Archives: Sculpture

Robert Smithson, “Spiral Jetty” (1970)

[credit]

spiral rock pile

Robert Smithson’s earthwork Spiral Jetty (1970) is located at Rozel Point peninsula on the northeastern shore of Great Salt Lake. Using over six thousand tons of black basalt rocks and earth from the site, Smithson formed a coil 1,500 feet long and 15 feet wide that winds counterclockwise off the shore into the water.

“Robert Smithson’s earthwork Spiral Jetty (1970) is located at Rozel Point peninsula on the northeastern shore of Great Salt Lake. Using over six thousand tons of black basalt rocks and earth from the site, Smithson formed a coil 1,500 feet long and 15 feet wide that winds counterclockwise off the shore into the water.”

Bruce Nauman, “Untitled” (1998-1999)

[credit]

Bruce Nauman Oliver Ranch Steps

Bruce Nauman Oliver Ranch Steps

“Nauman’s staircase sculpture at Oliver Ranch is a response to the physical contours of the land it crosses. Though all the treads are exactly the same size, 30 inches square, every riser is different and measures the land’s changing contours every 30 inches for the length of the staircase, almost a 1/4 of a mile. The smallest step is 3/8 of an inch; the largest step is 17 inches. In classic Nauman fashion, about the time you want to look at the view, you need to focus on your feet or you may fall because of the changes in step height.”

Krzysztof Wodiczko, “Alien Staff” (1993-94)

[credit]

In the Alien Staff project, alien means a state of being and ‘becoming’ both political and metaphysical, nomadic and migrant – a sort of psychological encampment in the space and time of today’s displaced and estranged world.

No aliens, residents, non-residents, legal and illegal immigrants have voting rights, nor any sufficient voice nor image of their own in official “public space”. When given a chance by the media (mainstream or ethnic) to communicate their experience or to state their opinions, demands and needs, immigrants find themselves framed and silenced.

The Alien Staff is a form of portable public address equipment and cultural network for individuals and groups of immigrants. It is an instrument that gives the individual immigrant a chance to “address” directly anyone in the city who may be attracted by the symbolic form of the equipment and the character of the “broadcasted” program.

The Alien Staff resembles the biblical shepherd’s rod. It is equipped with a high-tech mini-monitor and a small loud-speaker. The central part of the rod, the ‘Xenolog section’ is made up of interchangeable cylindrical containers for the preservation and display of precious relics related to the various phases of the owners history. A small image on the screen may attract attention and provoke observers to come very close to the monitor and therefore to the operator’s face, the usual distance from the immigrant, the stranger, decreases.

Upon closer examination, it will become clear that the image on the screen and the actual face of the person are of the same immigrant. The double presence in ‘media’ and in ‘life’ invites a new perception of the stranger as ‘imagined’ (a character on the screen) or as ‘experienced’ (an actor off-stage – a real life person). Since both the imagination and the experience of the viewer are increasing with the decreasing distance, while the program itself reveals unexpected aspects of the actor’s experience, the presence of the immigrant becomes both legitimate and real. This change in distance and perception might provide the ground for greater respect and self-respect, and become an inspiration for crossing the boundary between a stranger and a non-stranger.

As the identities of these persons are not only unstable but also often in antagonistic relation to each other, the only common ground they share is their resistance against any imposed (even self-imposed) uniform or generalised notion of a so-called immigrant identity.

The first model of the Alien Staff was built and tested in Barcelona in June 1993, following the first comprehensive exhibition of Wodiczko’s work in Europe in 1992, entitled Instruments, Projections, Vehicles, at the Fondació Antoni Tapies, Barcelona. A second model was built and its design further transformed in Brooklyn during the summer, fall and the winter 1992-93. The Alien Staff was used by many immigrants in New York, Paris, Houston, Marseille, Stockholm, Helsinki, Warsaw.

In Rotterdam, before and during Next 5 Minutes (1996), local operators walked through the city with Krzysztof Wodiczko projects Alien Staff and Mouth Piece. Aided by electronic walking sticks and mouth-size monitors they demonstrated how to communicate in an unfamiliar cultural environment and language.

Krzysztof Wodiczko, “Homeless Vehicle” (1988)

[credit]

Wodiczko carried out a sequence of interviews with the New York’s homeless, learning about how they function by day and night in order to survive and protect their belongings. He was especially interested in those who collected glass, metal, and plastic for resale. Based on that, he designed the multi-functional Homeless Vehicle (1988-89) which reflected their real working and living conditions.

This vehicle is not a solution of the homeless crisis. It is an emergency tool for people who have no options, and an intellectual tool, as it articulates the complex situation of the homeless. It doesn’t represent them as garbage-collecting bums, but as people who use a device intended for specific purposes – which should not exist in a civilised world. This vehicle has a life-saving and didactic function, it finds a form for that which no one wants so know and see – the artist continues.

In this device, its user can wash, cook, rest, and sleep. He or she is able to safely store the collected bottles and cans. The inhabitant is also protected – the vehicle is visible enough to be safe from being smashed by, e.g. a reversing dustcart.

Such vehicle in the street provokes different questions. What is this part used for? How many of such vehicles are to be produced? Or: who are you? How did you become homeless? Then, that person is not only the demonstrator of the vehicle, but also a citizen of the city who has become homeless. That person works day and night, contributing to protecting the environment. He or she helps the city and should be paid for that – Wodiczko explains.

Bruce Nauman “Live-Taped Video Corridor” (1970)

two monitors at the end of a narrow hall

Credit: Guggenheim

(credit)

Related to part of a multi-corridor installation that Nauman constructed earlier in 1970 at the Nicholas Wilder Gallery in Los Angeles, Live-Taped Video Corridor features two stacked television monitors at its far end, both linked to a camera mounted at the corridor’s entrance: the top monitor plays live feed from the camera, while the bottom monitor plays pretaped footage of the empty passageway from the identical angle. Walking down the corridor, one views oneself from behind in the top monitor, diminishing in size as one gets closer to it. The camera’s wide-angle lens heightens one’s disorientation by making the rate of one’s movement appear somewhat sped up. Meanwhile, the participant is entirely, and uncannily, absent from the lower monitor. The overall result is an unsettling self-conscious experience of doubling and displacement.

Dominique Blain “Missa” (1992)

shoes hanging from the ceiling

Dominique Blain “Missa” (1992)

100 pairs of army boots, mono-filament, metal grid, 700 x 700 cm

In the installation Missa, a hundred pairs of army boots suspended on nylon strings are arranged in a square grid. Raised slightly off the floor, the right-foot boots suggest the synchronised movement of military marching. The overall effect conjures up the destructive violence of political regimes that manipulate dehumanized troops like puppets. Although it was conceived in 1992, Missa continues to resonate wherever it is exhibited. This sensitive exploration of a military accessory, linked to individual soldiers but expressing a collective action, spans the history of wars and the atrocities they breed.

In her multidisciplinary practice, the Montréal artist Dominique Blain denounces the oppression that stems from relationships of power. She approaches historical references with restraint, using a few carefully chosen images and objects to arouse individual and collective memories. Leaving room for imagination, her socially engaged art gives viewers the leeway needed to reflect on the subject of war and totalitarianism. Blain’s work has been widely shown in Canada, the United States, Europe and Australia, notably at the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art and in the 1992 Sydney Biennale. [credit]

A nearly deafening silence immediately strikes the viewer of Blain’s remarkably spartan installation. This soundlessness continues to resonate – and change – as one walks around her three-dimensional grid of strings and shoes, filling in its absences with haunting narratives and dark associations. Ominous connections between facelessness and force, blind obedience and inhuman strength, a sense of belonging and one of being utterly lost gain clarity as one contemplates her austere memorial to war and its – often abstract – if all-too-real consequences.

– David Pagel, Dominique Blain, Art Forum, 1993

many pairs of shoes

Dominique Blain “Missa” (1992-2012)

Matthew McCaslin “Check It Out” (1998)

stack of tvs

Check it Out, 1998; TVs, VCRs, handtruck, clock, electric liights, electrical hardware. Photo: Courtesy Feigen Contemporary

This messing looking sculpture features TVs stacked on a rolling cart in combination with other objects. The screens show shots of urban commuters hustling to and from locations. It showcases the walking ritual of commuting. (credit: Walk Ways catalog)

—

“In the beginning, video artists used television sets simply to present videos tapes; later, people realized the monitor had its own potentially sculptural presence. Matthew McCaslin, who has focused on the technological infrastructure of everyday life (his installations bring into view wires, pipes, studs and other normally hidden stuff), has filled two galleries with sculptures that incorporate television sets. Surrealistic essays on the mechanization and the mediation of modern experience, they range in tone from dryly clever to mysteriously meditative.

Though the materials used are similar, Mr. McCaslin’s shows in Chelsea and SoHo are as different as night and day, literally. The pieces in Feigen’s well-lighted space deal mostly with work, transportation and other daily processes. At the entrance, a boombox in a wheelbarrow plays the sound of a cement mixer. In ”Check It Out,” a stack of four televisions broadcasting tapes of pedestrians hurrying in an airport is punningly strapped to an industrial hand truck.” [credit]

—

“Check It Out has a single stack of four video monitors accompanied by a large clock face sitting on the floor to its left, and by two yellow construction lanterns, one on the ground beside the clock, the other hanging over the far side of the screens. The screens project the image a shifting mass of people as viewed through security cameras in shopping malls or train stations. The mass of bodies, filmed in such an indiscriminate manner, based upon spatial position within a particular building, becomes both a current of human activity and a narrative of human reflection when shown in intermittent movement or listless waiting. There is a great pleasure in being able to view this mass as it mills about, and then sometimes one “actor” steps close to the camera lens, even notices it, and shows the depth of individual self-consciousness in a tic, a nervous smile, or a look of slight horror. When the film loop ends, as in other works, these images are replaced with a fine mist of static, which tends to heighten the sense of visual pastiche formed by the combination of recognizable entities with a nonrepresentational depiction of space. The visual images and even the flow of static enter into the context of narrative and drama, made physically approachable by the lamps and by the constantly moving clock beside the screens.”

Gibson, David. “Mining the Urban Divide: The Work of Matthew McCaslin.” PAJ: A Journal of Performance and Art, vol. 26, no. 2, 2004, pp. 66–72. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/3246367. Accessed 17 Jun. 2022.

François Morelli “Transatlantic Walk” (1985)

man with sculptural backpack

François Morelli

This walk commemorated the 40th anniversary of the bombing of Hiroshima. The artist carried a hollow fiberglass sculpture in the shape of a charred human torso on his back as he traveled from Berlin to Cologne to Amsterdam to Paris to New York to Philadelphi.

He archived the walk with photos, drawings, and writing. He engaged in many conversations.

He ritualistically filled the sculpture with water or air at various times symbolizing keeping his companion alive.

Further reading:

  • “Walk Ways” exhibition catalog. Essay by Stuart Horodner. Foreword by Judith Richards. (also credit for the above information)