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Othello Anderson, Constance Bacon, Phil Berkman, Adam Brooks, Kevin Cassidy, Kevin Henry, Peter Hessemer, Jo Hormuth, Terrence Karpowicz, Dennis Kowalski, Richard Rezac, Fern Shaffer, Diane Simpson, Tom Taylor, Bernard Wideroe, Shannon Wright July - August 2001 Curator: Corey Postiglione |
| It has been more than 20
years since Rosalind Krauss examined the changing dynamics of sculpture
in her now-famous essay, “Sculpture in the Expanded Field.” She presciently
charted the course that sculpture would take in the next decades, with
the advent of new technology and a new concept of space. Everything seemed
possible, from video installations to earthworks created in remote areas
of the country. “Nothing, it would seem, could possibly give to such a
motley of efforts the right to lay claim to whatever one might mean by
the category of sculpture,” Krauss wrote. “Unless, that is, the category
can be made to become almost infinitely malleable.”
Sculpture as a medium is not without its inherent problems: as any serious painter knows, sculpture’s strength and its liability is that it occupies real space. The great paradigm shift in three-dimensional art that occurred with the advent of minimalist and site-specific works in the 1960s drew heavily on sculpture’s strong side—its literalness, its actual presence in the world. The nagging question remains: How does one make sculpture today that has the ability to surprise us visually and make us think about issues without reverting to tired clichés and/or pointless formal machinations? This preamble is necessary, I feel, to fully appreciate what I was attempting to do with Sculpture in Chicago Now. As I have done with two previous exhibitions of Chicago art, Drawing in Chicago Now and Painting in Chicago Now, my first objective was to show a broad range of possibilities of three- and four-dimensional work currently being created by Chicago artists. Moreover, my aim was to explore this notion of the “expanded field” of sculpture, as articulated by Krauss, within the current context of “visual culture.” Sculpture in Chicago Now includes works that hopefully challenge preconceived notions of what passes for sculpture today. |
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