2011 Vertical Neck

My practice evolved to examine debris and the aftermath of violence in direct response to 9/11, rather than the tidy closed seams of sculpture.  My process continues to build inversions of cultural iconography in order to investigate notions of human failure. I’ve explored abject forms of violence and entropy through sub-cultures ranging from skateboards to epic-related action figures and models; monolithic Minimalism to national flags.

I’m invested in the history of sculpture and what it means to make objects and figures in these uncertain times. My Blue Angels (crushed, folded powder-coated aluminum and stainless-steel sculptures) were a response to the cultural instability and violence of present-day America [Simon Preston Gallery (2011), Galerie Christophe Gaillard (2012)]. I imagined Blue Angels to be a hybrid of airplane wings, wilted petals, and broken bird feathers. As a woman artist, I’m interested in taking masculine and monolithic Minimalist material and form and rendering it vulnerable.

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Blue Angels began from Google image searches of “plane crash debris”. I was interested in the abject state of a once massive technological structure—informed by witnessing the fall of the Twin Towers during 9/11. Much of my work before Blue Angels involved the clean, closed object-ness from the process of mold making and casting. None of these forms though seemed to matter after the towers fell. “Wreckage” seemed a more appropriate place to work on as a concept.

I was interested in 3 particular images: crashed airplanes, birds diving in flight, and wilted flower petals. With these in mind I wanted to make a kind of hybrid folded piece, with the contradictions implied by using macho metal, and with the loaded implications of anthropomorphizing a form. But really, the starting point was debris and how to touch it in a way that had life to it. Or more honestly, I wanted to build a figure at the moment of death or defeat.

Blue Angels has been compared to Minimalist gestures and I find this partly accurate. Minimalism was against metaphor or image. It was against object, even though the forms produced out of the movement were in direct contradiction to its dogma. I was leaning towards specific imagery and emptying it out differently. I was interested in Minimalism on other levels: critiqueing the Fascist male quality of the movement, and also formulating materiality contradictions in direct response by using Metal and Lead and Automotive Paint (like the male Minimalists) rather than Resin and Transparency and Paper and Strings (like the female post-Minimalists). These materials themselves evoke a kind of gender specificity. I wanted to upset those moments.

In direct response to the static-ness of a clunky sculpture, I approached the work as an open, action drawing where I draw with the metal sheet by wrestling with it on the floor to give it its wilted form. I was more interested in the “performance” of making sculpture rather than its finish fetish. But still this idea of a wilted figure interested me with the tension of being partly alive, partly defeated.

Color: The interior of Blue Angels was influenced directly from airline colors. I researched paint chips from Delta, and Korea Airlines, American Airlines, and others. I was interested in a particular institutional palette. The other color I used for Blue Angel was powder-coated, matte white in order to bring the association of crumpled paper into the fold. What was also important was creating a kind of intimacy and vulnerability to a large, discarded industrial form. Again I liked the contradictions of Minimalism and Feminism confusing one another.

Your Board: I exploited the materiality of a plywood skateboard by making otherwise rigid plywood wilt like paper. Akin to my earlier gesture of covering a car in leather to tamper with its objectification, the board becomes another body to deflate. At human scale, the skateboard is rendered as a figure that is ridden on, skinned, hung, and yours.  I soaked and then scored rigid plywood, enabling me to bend it in unusual ways: imitating wet paper hung up to dry.

Flare: The form of Flare came in reaction against the very physical mass and weight of sculpture. Every time I began making a form, I realized the bulk of it wasweighing me down. The idea of sculpture actually was closing in on itself the minute I started to put form to something. So these pieces came from wanting aperformative drawing very much in the same way as the Blue Angels but in line form. How much could I express in the simplest line? How much could “sculpture”reveal in the simplest line?

The title Flare comes from a direct reference to John McCracken’s leaning forms. I was interested in shifting the dialogue away from the strictly industrial, uprightform that brought in no questions. Instead I wanted to create an ambiguity between organic and industrial. McCracken’s pieces are explicitly industrial.The process is laid bare. With my own “Flare” I wanted to question a metaphorthat can be both tendril and robot; fragile and machined.

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