Yves Dana, Chaddaï, 2006,
Noir de Belgique, 102 x 14 x 7 cm
From Earth and Metal: Contemporary Sculpture celebrates the power of sculpture to re-define our environment. Inert in their existence yet dynamic in form, the artists masterfully seize natural and industrial materials such as bronze, steel, wood and stone to achieve profound connections between man, matter and metaphysics.
The exhibition discovers the potential of ordinary mediums beyond their industrial purposes, re-imagined as demonstrations of internal power and its projected effect on external space. Metals such as steel and bronze are wrought into astonishing forms, such as the confident and calculated lines drawn by French artist Bernar Venet’s ‘collapsed’ layers of steel arcs or American artist Jedd Novatt’s abstracted cubic structures that slice through the air in suspended motion. Mathematically measured and constantly at the mercy of gravity, Venet and Novatt’s works exploit the rigidity of their metals in order to architecturally construct the freedom of space around them.
The notion of re-creation and re-definition is also explored by French-Argentinian artist Pablo Reinoso, as he challenges expectations of functionality with forms that push the material’s boundaries.
From earth are the swelling depths of Egyptian-Armenian artist Armen Agop’s round-bellied granite sculptures, with futuristic UFO-like forms that converse with the stoic rawness of Yves Dana’s stone statues, erected as relics of the ancient past.
Pablo Reinoso, Spider Bench, 2011, painted Steel, 577 x 220 x 95 cm,Edition of 8 + 4AP
Exhibition: From Earth and Metal: Contemporary Sculpture
Dates: 5 March – 16 May 2015
Hours: 11am – 7pm. Closed on Sundays and Public Holidays.
Venue: Art Plural Gallery, 38 Armenian Street, 179942 Singapore
