11 Stoneware sculptures and cast concrete pedestals. 64" - Highest
6 Framed light jet prints each 40" L x 40" W
Mirrored tile wall
Six photographs of dramatic and artificial landscapes further serve as a backdrop to the sculptures in the exhibit and promote a theatrical effect by casting the visual space of the gallery as a stage. The ceramic sculptures act as both setting and character in a performance that, in part, engages the history of modernism. All elements of the installation similarly contribute to the dialogue with modernist traditions. All of the sculptures have an underlying geometry—box, sphere, etc.-- that is obscured by the "ornamental" foliage applied to their surfaces. Visually this creates a tension between the spare formalism that was essential to Minimalist Art and the notion of decorative, which this movement sought to extricate from its objects.
The glass front of the gallery was reflected in the mirrored tile wall I installed, thereby bringing the outside landscape indoors and visually doubling this long and narrow space. By creating a mirage of a promenade leading outside, the viewers became part of the scene and saw themselves in this illusionary landscape.
The photographs of the formal gardens of Villandry, Versailles, and Fontainebleau, deliberately adopted the formal language of their subject in their large, square format (3' x 3') and further captured the underlying geometry in the gardens of André le Notre and of the reconstructed Villandry garden of Joachim Carvallo. I was interested in the way these formal landscapes anticipate the later sculptural explorations from the geometry of the Constructivists to the grand gestures of Earth Art.
Six sculptures reinterpret the overlooked tradition of garden statuary, which function as memento mori to fleeting youth, fecundity, and beauty, and act as markers to the entrances of gardens suggesting that all disbelief and care be suspended upon entry. Untrodden Weed pays homage to this sentiment by extending into the air unencumbered.