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TAGS:
outdoor, sculpture
> DESCRIPTION
A Walk in
the Park: Outdoor Sculpture at PaceWildenstein features a dynamic selection of monumental outdoor sculpture
by seminal figures in modern and contemporary art, including Alexander Calder,
John Chamberlain, Jim Dine, Jean Dubuffet, Lee Ufan, Claes Oldenburg and Coosje
van Bruggen, Lucas Samaras, Joel Shapiro, and Kiki Smith.A Walk in the Park is currently on view
at 545 West 22nd Street, New
York City through July 24, 2009.
Outdoor
sculpture forms a dialogue with the environment that extends beyond the walls
of the gallery, museum and studio, spilling onto the city streets, sprawling
across lawns, hanging from buildings, anddancing across rooftops. Adjusting
the frame of reference and context in order to encompass architecture, people,
and traffic, and using materials that withstand the harsh conditions of
climate, the artists included in this exhibition have redefined the public
landscape with their monumental outdoor works.
The nine sculptures on view span more than four decades, highlighting
significant innovations in the development of modern and contemporary sculpture.
All of the artists whose work is included
in the exhibition have a long- standing association with outdoor and monumental
sculpture, having realized commissions in cities worldwide for much of the 20th
century and beyond.
Alexander Calder's invention of the mobile, stabile, and
standing-mobile heralded a major revolution in the practice of modern art,
paving the way for ground-breaking developments in monumental outdoor sculpture
by using compositions and materials that allowed the idea of abstraction to
move beyond the confines of the institution.
Championing the industrial tools and materials of the modern age, reintroducing
color to outdoor works, and abandoning the literal figuration that had
characterized sculptural production for decades prior, his sculptures revitalized
a stagnant art form. Calder's Trois
pics(1967), a 93" x
63" x 66-1/2" maquette, on view in this exhibition, was created for
the 1968 Winter Olympics in Grenoble and was exhibited in the Garden Plaza at
590 Madison (at 56th Street) in New York City in 1996-97. Like Calder, whose abstract stabiles make
playful allusions to the natural and animal realm, Joel Shapiro explores the metamorphic possibilities of geometric
figures and forms, referencing the human body, spirit and gesture as he merges
figuration with abstraction. Human emotions emanate, ranging from exuberant to
melancholic, tender or longing, apparent in the 109" x 77" x 46"
cast bronze sculpture Untitled (1996-97) on view in this
exhibition.
Coosje van Bruggen and Claes Oldenburg's oversized commodities
invade the landscape, assuming the character of living forms as mundane objects
are transformed into the extraordinary. From gigantic trowels to clothespins,
binoculars, and shuttlecocks, together the artists realized more than 40
large-scale projects in their 33 year collaboration. A nearly 9' tall fork with a fiberglass
meatball and spaghetti (Leaning Fork with Meatball and Spaghetti II,
1994) will be on view in this exhibition.
The pair's final collaboration (van Bruggen passed away in January) in
their Large-Scale Projects series, Tumbling
Tacks, was recently installed on a hillside, hurtling towards the Kistefos Museum, near
Oslo, Norway. Currently on view at the
Whitney Museum of American Art is a major two-part exhibition: Claes
Oldenburg: Early Sculpture, Drawings, and Happenings Filmsand Claes
Oldenburg and Coosje van Bruggen: The Music Room(through September 6). Drawings
on Site: Claes Oldenburg and Coosje van Bruggen is also on view at The Menil Collection, Houston through October 11,
2009.
Lucas Samaras,
whois the official representative
of Greece at the 53rd International Art Exhibition, The Venice Biennale (his
installation, PARAXENA¸ commissioned by the Hellenic Ministry of Culture and
curated by Matthew Higgs is on view
in the Greek Pavilion in the Giardini della Biennale through November 22,
2009), transformsan ordinary chair
into a fantastical ascending sculpture that changes positions depending on the
audience's viewpoint in Chair Transformation #20B,
1996. An edition of three, one of the editions
is installed in the sculpture garden of the National Gallery of Art, Washington
D.C. Lucas Samaras began his "Chair Transformation" series in 1969, transforming chairs
through a wide variety of methods and materials-covering them in mirrors or
yarn, entwining them in wool, and painting them in bright patterns. He
has constructed chairs out of many materials throughout his career, including
Cor-ten steel, wire, Formica, and wood.
Spatial and material concerns are also central to Lee Ufan's
work. The artist has used the
term "Relatum" rather than
"sculpture"to describe his
three-dimensional works since the 1990s, suggesting an individual element
within a relation. In Relatum-dynamics
place (2008) a 32" x 33" x 36" stone rests atop a 1"
x 8' 5" x 7' 7" steel plate, the two materials forming a dialogue
with one another. John Chamberlain's investigation of material has resulted in works
created from foam, foil, paper bags, Plexiglas, resin, and steel. Perhaps most famously known for his signature use of crushed automobile
parts, Chamberlain began experimenting with stainless steel in 2005
while working on an underwater sculpture that he had conceived of for Donald
Judd's pool in Marfa, Texas in the 1970s. Incedentallyneutered (2008), a ball of wrestled
stainless-steel strips covered with dabs of green, yellow, blue and red paint, represents
a new direction for the
artist and a
new chapter in a career that has critically redefined sculpture many times over
for the past five decades.
Splashes of
vibrant enamel in pink, magenta, red, yellow, green, and blue decorate Jim Dine's bronze Night Fields, Day Fields
(1999), measuring 78" x 53" x 36." For nearly thirty years, the artist has been
creating variations on the Greek statue Venus, from the massive trio of bronzes
entitled Looking Toward the Avenue,
which measure 14', 18' and 23' high and grace the corner of 52nd
Street and Sixth Avenue in New York City, to a 37 foot tall, 11.5 ton Cincinnati Venus, which sits atop the
52-foot high rotunda of the Carl B. Stokes U.S. Court House in Cincinnati. Most recently, in 2007 Dine was commissioned
by the City of Borås, Sweden to create Walking to Borås, a cast bronze
Pinocchio of monumental proportions, measuring 30' x 16' 3" x 13' 9".
Other
important works on view in this exhibition include Kiki Smith's cast aluminum
and bronze Moon on Crutches Figure 2 (2002), in which a stiff body is
placed on wooden stanchions at precarious angles, stylistically reminiscent of
Greek kore figures, and Jean Dubuffet's Tour
aux Récits (13' 4" x 6' 2" x 6' 2"), which the artist
had conceived of in 1973 and which was realized in 2007 by Richard Dhoedt, the
fabricator who cast all of Dubuffet's important large-scale projects. Tour
aux Récits is an example of Dubuffet's Hourloupe cycle, the first major exploration into the architectural
dimension of his work, inspired by his interest in architecture and his desire to design works
which would form a dialogue with passersby.
For more
information on A Walk in the Park: Outdoor Sculpture at PaceWildenstein,
please contact Jennifer Benz Joy at jjoy@pacewildenstein.com or Lauren Staub at lstaub@pacewildenstein.com or call
212.421.3292.
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