BIG BANG

Gabriel Curry's Self-portrait (2014) as a whole over a whole divided in full distribution loop reaches through the historical trajectory of Ray’s found object sculpture to source beauty from the mundane. Here, the artist explores the physical integrity of objects by combining technique with material to question how function versus form is represented. In exemplifying the almost-invisible features of our shared environment, Mark Handforth’s enigmatic sculptural assemblage Red hydrant (2004) operates between shrine and a celebratory object, made as a tribute to the first responders of the 9/11 tragedy. The juxtaposition of candles with the American fire hydrant inverts the object’s use from the civic to the domestic.

Capturing the energy of an expanding field of sculpture, artists initiated a sense of functionality as conceptual additive to materials of making. Franz West developed his whimsical sculptural sensibility as an anti-thesis to post-war brutality. The artist’s colourful and irreverent sculptures, exemplified in Sitzskulptur (2004), were intended to defy the preciousness of the art object by being intentionally interactive, in the case his work on exhibit, as an opportunity to sit. Where the fragility of the artwork is undermined in West, Walead Beshty underscored the globalized infrastructures required to move objects across distances. Polished copper has an ability to register manipulation on its surface which is exemplified in Beshty’s 16-inch Copper (Fedex Kraft Box) (2010). The marks of handling across international distances imbue the minimalist form with a history of touches. Carl Andre’s minimal formal language, known as floor-works, reduce art down to its very elemental properties of material alloy. 6 CuAl LINE (2005) continues this pursuit in polished metal squares, as surfaces intended to be experienced by being walked on.

As an exhibition curated under the premise of exponential development in the field of sculpture, BIG BANG brings together expanded perspectives on form and material exploration within the confines of three-dimensional space. Artists such as Alexander Calder, Tony Cragg, Ugo Rondinone and Pol Bury equally placemark pivotal ideas in the progression of material form in sculpture. The exhibition as a whole lends itself to the infinite possibilities of sculpture as an ever-expanding universe of creative innovation.