John Stathatos
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Prizes, juries and committees come and go, making a great deal of noise and stirring up impressively large clouds of dust, but they have a limited shelf life; ephemeral by nature, their decisions are quickly obscured, if only by the rapidly closing footsteps of their successors, and their influence is mercifully fleeting. Alison Wilding's latest London exhibition confirmed that whatever last year's Turner prize jury may in its wisdom have decreed, she is one of the most serious and exciting artists in the country. The selection of new work on show at Karsten Schubert was dominated by Blue, a large (45" x 88" x 117") sculpture in translucent pvc and patinated brass, the latest and most successful in the line of sculptures made of slotted, interlocking strips of pvc which began in 1990 with Inland. It is made up of fourteen stacks running alternatively at right angles to each other, building up to a large, vaguely ziggurat-like shape with a dip in the middle; the shape seems almost but not quite symmetrical, and a brass sphere is embedded in the middle, offset to one side and closer to the top surface. The pvc is a subtle blue-grey colour, while the sphere has an uneven surface, pitted and studded. Merely as an engineering exercise it is an impressive tour-de-force, breath-taking in its self-assurance; logic, or experience, might suggest that the whole construction could suddenly tilt and fold to one side like a house of cards, yet it radiates an absolute self-confidence. More astonishing still is the way in which a structure devised by what must necessarily have been a rigidly defined modular system can produce such an extraordinary effect of lightness; observed from a middle distance, the sculpture has a smoky, insubstantial look to it, as of frozen air, or of a mass of ice glimpsed through spindrift. The layered construction in a translucent material means that small shifts in perspective, or the viewer's angle of approach, result in disproportionately large changes in appearance; seen through ever-thicker layers of pvc, the sphere eventually becomes invisible, only to slowly reappear as one continues circling around the work. From a closer vantage, the sphere acquires a solidity enhanced by its setting within the insubstantial matrix. From a formal point of view, the contrast between materials, between the rugose solidity of the brass and the flickering, luminous quality of the pvc is counterpointed by the way the sphere is enclosed and held within the thin, knife-like sheets of material. This is very much a landmark use of these materials. Blue, however, is essentially a meditative work. Some sculpture, such as for instance Caro's, declares itself all in a rush: there it is, occupying a specific volume of space, making an unambiguous statement. You may take it or leave it, but either way its intentions and purpose are evident. Not so Wilding's sculpture, and particularly not this piece; one needs to spend time with and around it, not because it is at all reticent or hermetic, but for the sheer pleasure of learning more about the way it responds to shifts of light or of perception. In this context, Schubert's placing of it under the window in the first-floor gallery was inspired, as this is a work which very definitely benefits from natural light. A last look from the stairwell elicits yet another image - that of a small but determined planet rolling through space, borne up by a lattice of blue-grey lines of force. |
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| © John Stathatos, 1993 First published in Untitled, London, Autumn 1993 |
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| This text is copyright, and may not be reproduced electronically, mechanically or otherwise without the author's permission. However, it has been made available online for the benefit of interested parties, who may print a single copy for their own use and who may quote from it freely, provided the author and the original publication sources are acknowledged. | |||
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