Alex Chitty

Stutters

 

The question of place, site or location has always been a central issue for sculpture. Unlike painting, it normally does not carry its frame with it, Weed Submit query. noun. A wild plant growing where it is not wanted...and it is thus much more sensitive to issues of placement. A cluster of things semi-invited. It does not project a virtual space, opening a window into immensity Like nocturnal playfellows, as (say) landscape painting does; it takes up space, moves in and occupies a site, moving at night and holding still by day. obtruding on it or changing it. There seems to be no universally accepted definition It risks failure on two fronts, by being too intrusive (Serra) or too passive of what a weed is exactly. (the statue as perch for pigeons). There seems to be an ideal middle place, a Utopia for sculpture, hinted at in the notion of the 'genius loci', the spirit of place embodied in the sculptural figure The weeds pulled out of gardens in Florida are sold as houseplants at Chicago's Home Depot. that seems to belong to a place, to express its inner being, and to 'activate' the place by incarnating its special character.

 

But this notion of sculpture Ten singular sculptures, all part of a group. as rooted in a specific place, organically connected with its site, seems like an archaic and nostalgic residue Each one varies slightly, like an individual specimen within a species. perhaps appropriate for a primitive, sedentary society, deeply connected to the land. It reeks of Heideggerean mysticism, of clearings in the wilderness, Each blade of grass on that lawn may have its own appeal. 'the release of places at which a god appears', as when the dryad or free spirit is 'released' from its prison by the sculptor who carves a figure from the trunk. If you've seen a night heron before, that shouldn't stop you from looking each time you glimpse another one. What possible application could it have for modern cultures Lawns back in the day in Europe were not a single species of grass. caught up in vortices of mobility, flow and instantaneous global communication? They were planted with clover and chamomile and thyme. What is the place of sculpture - especially sculpture focused on the human body - today? Bees would feed there and the ground where you walked was scented.

 

[Text in black excerpted from WJT Mitchell, "What Sculpture Wants: Placing Antony Gormley. "1995]