December 17, 2010
This month an army of monster-sized figurines have entered our city in a bold manner, briefly causing the front window of Modern Art Oxford to be removed and the local roads to be closed. The work is innocuous and hopeful, showing the viewer transparently how it is made - plaster applied onto an exposed iron frame, images sketched onto the surface. Cranes have been spotted at the Ashmolean installing a figure of a man plastered onto a metal frame in the forecourt; a video downstairs at Modern Art Oxford documents this gripping experience.
I am grateful to this visionary artist for bringing a new idiom to our galleries, linking the old and the new metaphorically and geographically. His incomplete statues work on different levels. The figurative clarity of the human form is ever-present yet fractured. Not all of the pieces are present in the body of Houseago’s ‘Walking Figure’ or its neighbouring classical statue of ‘Elderly Fisherman’ of 200AD, but for different reasons. The deconstruction of Houseago’s work is inevitably postmodern, whilst the classical piece is divided with its torso in Berlin and legs further afield. Perhaps like this classical fisherman we are in two places at once when looking at Houseago’s work.
Houseago’s statues curated in Modern Art Oxford, such as ‘Crouching Figure’, have big chunky headless torsos sharing the logical blueprint of the Antony Gormley piece standing on top of Exeter College on Broad Street. The parallels are not denied, but celebrated, as if the pieces were a band of brothers. This is the explanation I find for the impression of warmth I get from the work.
Although there is a cartoon quality to the sketching scribbled on top of the pieces, it is not jocular and for me, aspects of them point towards darker themes such as corpses and gas masks. One of the mask-like creations inside Modern Art Oxford stands on a redwood plinth, a salute to California, the artist’s place of residence. The gaps for eyes poking out of these massive masks, entitled ‘Giant Mask (Cave)’ and ‘Electric Mask I’ roll out expressions that cut across Modern Art Oxford like the beams from a flash light. Similarly the ‘Walking Figure’ statue inside the Ashmolean is positioned next to Cromwell’s death mask, offering another delightful overlap in dislocation.
This is monster art, the scaling up of the form intensifying the artist’s original intention. A darkness binds the disparate pieces, including a giant spoon, holding the exhibition together. Having spent the daylight hours interacting with the sculptures I observe for the first time dusk is something Oxford does rather well. The falling dark spreads quickly through long library windows, outdoor market stalls and office blocks connecting one and all. This is the kind of connectivity reflected in this exhibition; works unknowingly absorbed by the passer-by, perhaps glimpsed at through a bus window, becoming part of the fabric of the city.
I am grateful to this visionary artist for bringing a new idiom to our galleries, linking the old and the new metaphorically and geographically. His incomplete statues work on different levels. The figurative clarity of the human form is ever-present yet fractured. Not all of the pieces are present in the body of Houseago’s ‘Walking Figure’ or its neighbouring classical statue of ‘Elderly Fisherman’ of 200AD, but for different reasons. The deconstruction of Houseago’s work is inevitably postmodern, whilst the classical piece is divided with its torso in Berlin and legs further afield. Perhaps like this classical fisherman we are in two places at once when looking at Houseago’s work.
Houseago’s statues curated in Modern Art Oxford, such as ‘Crouching Figure’, have big chunky headless torsos sharing the logical blueprint of the Antony Gormley piece standing on top of Exeter College on Broad Street. The parallels are not denied, but celebrated, as if the pieces were a band of brothers. This is the explanation I find for the impression of warmth I get from the work.
Although there is a cartoon quality to the sketching scribbled on top of the pieces, it is not jocular and for me, aspects of them point towards darker themes such as corpses and gas masks. One of the mask-like creations inside Modern Art Oxford stands on a redwood plinth, a salute to California, the artist’s place of residence. The gaps for eyes poking out of these massive masks, entitled ‘Giant Mask (Cave)’ and ‘Electric Mask I’ roll out expressions that cut across Modern Art Oxford like the beams from a flash light. Similarly the ‘Walking Figure’ statue inside the Ashmolean is positioned next to Cromwell’s death mask, offering another delightful overlap in dislocation.
This is monster art, the scaling up of the form intensifying the artist’s original intention. A darkness binds the disparate pieces, including a giant spoon, holding the exhibition together. Having spent the daylight hours interacting with the sculptures I observe for the first time dusk is something Oxford does rather well. The falling dark spreads quickly through long library windows, outdoor market stalls and office blocks connecting one and all. This is the kind of connectivity reflected in this exhibition; works unknowingly absorbed by the passer-by, perhaps glimpsed at through a bus window, becoming part of the fabric of the city.