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Cryptically titled W.H./M.M.D., this three-part sculpture is Tom Butter’s second large-scale, public, outdoor work, and his first in a wholly urban setting (the other was installed last summer in the sylvan pool in Central Park at 100th Street). Made of polyester resin, fiberglass cloth, and steel, it is a narrow, organic structure in which irregular translucent forms play contrapuntally with the rectilinear environment of steel and glass. Two opposing vertical elements—one melon-colored, the other gray green—appear to be rising from a dark gray base of curving, inflated forms. The first element bulges at its middle while the second bears a trumpetlike flare at its top. One is ungainly, the other elegant; one warm hued, the other cool. Narrow seaming inflects the flared column, while the other is broad in striation. The irregular ground forms, often punched and riddled with dents, look like some heap of rubbish, yet enclose the vertical members with encircling, even enfolding gestures. Below them lies a dark gray wooden base, as if in mimicry of a sculpture pedestal. Carbon Quadraxial Fabric
In this work Butter seems to mock many terms conventional to public art. The sculpture is placed smack in the middle of the plaza, in perfect “pedestal position”—exactly where you’d expect a Henry Moore, in fact. Moreover, although it has a base, the conventional metaphor for meaning, it is without direct content; modeled on the monument, the sculpture subverts its connotations. Butter’s strategy consists in placing familiar elements in unfamiliar configurations, adding ambiguity to a field known for dependency on publicly recognizable forms. The organic shapes, curved and irregular, work against the rigid grid of the skyscrapers, playing unfixity against fixity of meaning and with it, unfixity of function. The work’s why and wherefore remain unknowable: these are fugitive forms, eluding precise definition; they are endlessly evocative, but evade the closure of meaning. In the appeal made on the viewer to reject conventional responses, this allusive and highly equivocal work has important public power.
Fiberglass Cloth Woven Roving By providing your information, you agree to our Terms of Use and our Privacy Policy. We use vendors that may also process your information to help provide our services.