A New Movement
New York Energyites Brother Michael and Ion have been conducting tests of some movable “trans-a-gon” sculptures that they recently had fabricated according to detailed plans drawn up by noted New York conceptualist Ferg DeWitt almost three decades ago. The pair made an incredible discovery while collaborating with DeWitt on a pair of megalithic graphite wall-blobs at an uptown Manhattan gallery. In the process of searching for some artist proofs in a dusty crate, they instead unearthed a virtual lost treasure.
“The blueprints were all there; they had always been there,” explained Ion. “It was like they were just waiting to emerge in our presence.”
Michael figures the unconsummated sculptures were originally conceived as part of the ITT-sponsored Sense/Motion display at Expo ’76 in Montreal, but were never completed because DeWitt had a falling out with the company’s execs over their invested interest in non-personal communication industries.
“It was extremely important to DeWitt at that time that human interaction remain intimate,” explained Michael. “Innovations like video-conferencing and speakerphones really rubbed him the wrong way.”
DeWitt gave the pair his blessing in creating and eventually utilizing the many-sided pieces. The original plans called for the shapes to be cast out of cream-colored polymer but it proved too costly so the new trans-a-gon prototypes are currently being constructed of 90% recycled craft paper stretched over a wooden frame, which is then coated with a synthetic gloss gesso, at least for now.
“We plan to have them made exactly to DeWitt’s specs before we show them publicly,” Michael explains, “We’re just having a little trouble with the earth-tone range available from the plastics manufacturer.”
With so much focus on “junk pile” installations and retro-appropriation in the galleries as of late, it is interesting to follow a project that touches on both while simultaneously addressing their downsides. It’s a difficult task, an uphill battle so to speak, as the work has, in a sense, “failed” once already.
“Trans-a-gon” was a concept DeWitt had been working on since the late ‘60s,” Michael explained. “But he dropped it at some point in favor of the two-dimensional geode graphs that proved so popular with collectors.”
So while just about every major institution owns at least one of his graph pieces, DeWitt’s trans-a-gons have remained unknown. Until now that is.
“Shape-art has been static since forever,” claimed Ion, who admits he admires the reductive tradition and the oeuvre of its innovators like Stella and Malevich, but often longs for “that feeling of the wind in my hair.” “I think it was [Japanese fashion designer] Yohji Yamamoto who said that minimalism was just another word for sloth,” he added.
At a parking lot/test area somewhere in Brooklyn, Michael and Ion race back and forth across the expanse of asphalt. It’s a spectacular and exhilarating display. Not since Michelangelo Pistoletto rolled his giant ball through the streets of Turin has the art world been privy to such poetic extremes of motion and form.
“It’s not important how many sides the shape has,” added Ion, “It can be a hexagon or a pentagon or whatever. It just has to be able to move.”
Comments
shapes are ok
Posted by: Bobby Culvert | October 3, 2005 09:29 PM