Unmonumental
Sculpture is leading the contemporary art discourse - the particular
king that is ‘built, sewn, glued or tied together.’ Components being found,
made and detritus, these sculptures ranging in size, delicacy, weight and
appearance (figurative to absolutely non-objective), due to the artists who
make them and their ranges in age.
All can be described as the two related ideas: assemblage and unmonumentality. Both a result of the excess of choice and the new paradigms that have arisen. As every loose object, along or in combination is (at least theoretically) available as an element of the sculptural, then the mechanism of filtering, selecting and assembling becomes a large part of making sculpture. The placement of preformed materials, objects or fragments not intended to be art materials in juxtaposition with one another being named ‘assemblage’.
In contemporary sculpture, the re-emergence of assembled forms have adopted the method of juxtaposition of forms, rather than a compositional blending of them. Each sculptural component having a duel identity, being read for what it was while at the same time participating in the overall meaning of the whole sculpture. To some, a combine, and by extension assembled art, was less a representation of the world filled with chaos of information, than an actual piece of it.
The arrangement of two unrelated objects meeting on the strange ground of art has turned into ‘stunning intelligent arrangements strung together in ways so clever as to make one bark with laughter or gasp with astonishment.’ The sculptural elements are not random but chosen carefully for their meaning.
For many of today’s sculptors the interest of the work isn’t to expand the notions of what sculpture or art can be, but to engage with the larger issues of contemporary life in a straight forward manner.
The term monumental connotes- ‘massiveness, timelessness and public significance, where ‘unmonumental’ is meant to describe a kind of sculpture that is not against these values but intentionally lacks them.’
All can be described as the two related ideas: assemblage and unmonumentality. Both a result of the excess of choice and the new paradigms that have arisen. As every loose object, along or in combination is (at least theoretically) available as an element of the sculptural, then the mechanism of filtering, selecting and assembling becomes a large part of making sculpture. The placement of preformed materials, objects or fragments not intended to be art materials in juxtaposition with one another being named ‘assemblage’.
In contemporary sculpture, the re-emergence of assembled forms have adopted the method of juxtaposition of forms, rather than a compositional blending of them. Each sculptural component having a duel identity, being read for what it was while at the same time participating in the overall meaning of the whole sculpture. To some, a combine, and by extension assembled art, was less a representation of the world filled with chaos of information, than an actual piece of it.
The arrangement of two unrelated objects meeting on the strange ground of art has turned into ‘stunning intelligent arrangements strung together in ways so clever as to make one bark with laughter or gasp with astonishment.’ The sculptural elements are not random but chosen carefully for their meaning.
For many of today’s sculptors the interest of the work isn’t to expand the notions of what sculpture or art can be, but to engage with the larger issues of contemporary life in a straight forward manner.
The term monumental connotes- ‘massiveness, timelessness and public significance, where ‘unmonumental’ is meant to describe a kind of sculpture that is not against these values but intentionally lacks them.’
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