Perspectives on a Modernist Legacy
No period in art history easily names itself. Modernism passed and Post Modernism was a catchy title for uncertain times. We have moved beyond that to Post Post Modernism, Neo Modernism and the up to the minute Alter Modernism none of which have yet to dominate as defining terms. This group of sculptors has their roots in the great period of Twentieth Century sculpture. They have digested its aftermath but retain a faith and commitment to the values and discoveries of Modernism.
All taking part, seem to me, to share a concern for the formal considerations of making a three dimensional object. This is done in a humorous and respectful manner rather than with an ironic and pop sensibility. The work is still conceptual as the ideas are embedded in the fabric of the sculpture. The concepts fashion the process and are displayed in a semiotics of material. Meaning is inside the design and form.
Take Ekkehard Altenburger’s Fallen Arch that was started when Tony Blair stepped down. He employs his training as a stonemason but the craft is used to channel the artistic content not as a self-serving idea. Fallen Arch is an anti-heroic monument prophesying the collapse of the economy under New Labour.
Mat Chivers’ work such as Cumulus has a relationship to the carving tradition of Moore, Hepworth and Bourgeois. The forms draw on scientific research into the ephemeral movement of clouds and breath. The work suggests amorphous forms and processes yet is developed from a highly controlled approach that often uses computer design and rapid prototyping in contrast with more 'intuitively' carved elements.
Oliver Barrat has been working with industrial paint companies to produce a highly finished surface that references industrial fabrication. His sculptures are like factory pipes and tubes that have been transformed into post-Noguchi organic shapes, that sweep and curve in unexpected directions. It is the known world, metamorphosed into confusion and ambiguity.
Julian Wild in his System series of twisted tubular sculptures also plays with the vernacular of industrial fabrication. He reveals its potential as a metaphor for the psychosexual and the emotional. System no.26 appears to act as plumbing. However even the most delicate of personal effluent would not pass down this U bend. It is tubular dysfunction.
John De Pauley’s work is more meditative and pensive. He has carved two mute figures, classical columns that have been squashed down to a dumpy size for Homer Simpson. The stone is left unpolished and raw, an allegory for companionship and feeling. They retain a monumentality that is hopeful and resilient.
William Peers uses the well-honed techniques of the stonemason with the awareness of a post post modernist to experiment with textures and image. Stone becomes fabric, organic tissue, and flesh. In formal exercises the sculpture becomes a repository of the sensations and feelings that lie beneath the skin.
In the past Almuth Tebbenhoff has played off the earnestness of some steel sculpture using colour, and delicacy. Recently she has started to explore stone carving and brings the fluidity of the metalworker to this more obdurate material.
Bill Pye’s work connects us to the last period of High Modernism in the Sixties. His fountain Coraslot plays with the symbolism of the feminine archetype both in its oval slotted design and use of water. Pye has consistently experimented with new ways of making sculpture. Last year at Frieze a young artist exhibited a water vortex to great acclaim yet few commented that Pye had done the same long before.
I want the audience to react to the sculpture with their bodies before their minds that is why I have developed interactive rotating sculptures that the audience can turn and climb on top of. This democratizes the experience.
Abstraction can still convey feelings and emotions about the body with ambiguity and power whist still working with pure sculptural form.
Modernism may be a lonely furrow but it’s a deep one.
David Worthington.