Wednesday, August 18, 2010

Rodin: The Gates of Hell. Activity without accomplishment.

My method of sculpture may be quite interesting to you. I do not try to hide that my sculptures are not the same as nature: they show signs of my sculpting and editing and some even have obvious seams of the molds from which I cast them. Some people call my work fragmented, because of this. But it can be put to good effect. Let me show you.
This is The Gates of Hell. Pleasant image, isn't it. Do you feel a sense of fragmentation in this work? Do you know why?

I made each of the figures on the Gates separately. Some of them are even what other sculptors of my day would consider "incomplete". The result of this is that the figures feel like they were patched together. Even though they are all together in the same work, there is no true unison between them (because I created each one separately), leaving them only to grasp desperately at each other without ever being able to attain mutuality.

Do you also notice that many of the figures (especially on the two sides of the Gates) are similar to one another? When I make my sculptures, I make "spare parts" like hands and torsos, which I can then put together to complete a figure. In this work, my use of figures with identical torsos and similar poses* helps to show the idea that despite all the frenzy and activity going on, there is no real change that has happened. The Gates of Hell indeed - all action but not accomplishing anything, without an end in sight. What a wretched existence!






* But don't you find it interesting that the same body parts, arranged in different combinations and poses, can provide such a great variety of figures? I feel as though this method of working makes the range of meaning my work can show so much wider.

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