SCULPTURE X:
MATERIAL/IMMATERIAL
Involvement:
Untitled by Shawn Campbell. University of Georgia, MFA. Mixed media sculpture. 2019. Photo Credit: KA Letts.
The SculptureX 2019 Symposium explored ideas pertinent to contemporary sculpture through the multivalent state of materiality. “Materiality” is a loaded term within the space of sculpture. Historically, we’ve used it to specify our medium and media, but over the last six decades the field has expanded in such a way that the idea of materiality has been redefined and moved beyond the traditional boundaries of “medium”. In the vernacular, “material” and “medium” continue to speak about the built, the made, and the artist’s interaction between the hand and material. The contemporary meaning of materiality, however, overlays the space of sculpture and now expands the role of “medium” by binding it to an ontology of things, objects, interactive conditions, and ephemeral states mediated by layered technologies.
Materiality offers inexhaustible avenues of exploration into the immaterial creating shifting states that slip from materializing to dematerializing and back again. The results: a disciplinary discourse that encompasses the use of materials of every quality and quantity, extending our understanding of the physical, and opening sculpture to the immersive, performative, virtual, generative, environmental, and social.
Iterations by Meagan Smith. Kent State University. Porcelain, glaze, mason stains, plexiglass, aluminum. 2019. Photo Credit: KA Letts.
Untitled by Elizabeth Cote. School of the Art Institute of Chicago, MFA. Latex, metal, tension wire. 2019. Photo Credit: KA Letts.
SculptureX (i.e. sculpture exchange) is a teaching and networking resource aimed at promoting collaboration among art teaching institutions within the region and to increase appreciation of visual arts programs of sculpture in its broadest meaning. Operating under the nexus of the Sculpture Center in Cleveland, the fundamental goal of SculptureX is to encourage and foster the intellectual pursuit of compassionate thinking while discovering new forms and definitions of visual communication and understanding.
The images in this folder are referring to one of the symposium’s exhibitions, located at the historic Secor Building in downtown Toledo, Ohio.
Chief Curator: Brian Edward Carpenter
Assistant Curator: Taline Frantz