Richard Serra and I agree, I think, that sculpture is not a joke (not Hirst, not Koons, not even Duchamp, except as a limiting case).
It is deadly serious, an attempt to reduce, not elaborate, toward an essential gesture.
It is the manipulation of a single material—a monolith (single stone)—to define space.
It is not an agglomeration—or assemblage—of many, or even just a few, disparate fragments; after you’ve seen one hodge-podge, you’ve seen them all.
And it is not carving away—diminishing—a chunk in hopes of finding a more illustrative form.
We both begin with material that is flat—a sheet—as close to two-dimensional as possible.
But, as Carl Andre demonstrated, flat is not enough: tiles can be spread in grids—or units stacked or butted—but their perimeter is ill-defined (endless) and their joints monotonous.
So we stand the slab on edge and play with it. We deploy it to shape space in an (almost) continuous arc.
That’s the only gesture that has interested Serra in recent years, but I am out to bust Serra’s paradigm, and my work stands in absolute opposition to his.
For example,
Serra Junker
Public Private
Monumental Ephemeral
Monstrous Miniature
Industrial Domestic
Heavy -duty Flimsy
Steel plate Aluminum foil
Arcs Wrinkles
Tough Fragile
Computer-generated Spontaneous
Hegemonic Anarchic
Permanent Contingent
Rusty Shiny
Difficult Easy
Aggrandizing Diffident
Costly Cheap
Walk-in See-through
Iconic Idiosyncratic
Smooth Wrinkled
Solid Holey
Portentous Playful
