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CUE Art Foundation: Stephen Schofield - Curated by Richard Tuttle - 8 Sept 2012 to 13 Oct 2012 Current Exhibition |
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Stephen Schofield
Giddy Cosmonaut (work in progress),2012. Cloth, sugar, and hydrocal. 164 1/2" X 45" X 31 1/2" - |
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Artist's Statement Slyboot's Promise These pieces are all skin and bones and, at least at the beginning, a lot of hot air. The materials are flexible and liquid: cloth soaked in sugar water. Thin, light and of little substance, these sculptures are a gang of sly boots. Although some of them are really big guys, they are all in the end just surface and illusion. That said, they are stiff, not stuffed; tight and tonic not soft or embryonic like street inflatables, so something must be at work to make these pieces stand, float and leap off the wall, floor, and ceiling as they do. The strength and promise of these pieces depends on the interactions of the weight of the cloth, the cut of the patterns, the choice of seam, the concentration of the sugar water solution and the circulation of air. With the right balance, the sugar reinforces the seams so they can act as bones and binds the fibres so the cloth can hold the gestures of the figures. In fact, once the pieces are set, they are remarkable resistant. Since I started this work during a residency at the International Studio and Curatorial Programme in New York in 2008, I've come to realise that making these slyboots is a complex and contradictory matter. Complex, because most of the figures are a patchwork of over one hundred and seventy separate pieces of cloth and contradictory, because I consider each piece of cloth as both clothing and body, the assembly of pieces as sculpture and effigy and when I step back, I see the group of works as both classical nudes and superheroes. Perhaps they are so complex and contradictory because I first created the patterns by drawing directly on my companion's body - Michel Daigneault - the different muscle groups to transfer them unto pattern paper only to adjust and exploit the potential and promise of each variable: cloth, cut, seam, mix and air in order to make the cloth be true. Curator's Statement by Richard Tuttle The Fuller Void Seeing Stephen Scofield's work in Toronto at the National Textile Museum in 2010, was moving the way good art should be and seldom is. I was moved because of its testimonial aspect, perhaps because I felt drawn to witness, myself, having suffered close proximity to the many 9/11 victims too quickly cremated, or more generally because anyone, who has lived, need memorializing in this way. It is also a comment on life- a floating, horizontalizing, air form, all the more prescient for how it's formed; every detail (down to what molecule?) bespoke the intensity of its expression, though I'm not sure Stephan would want to acknowledge all that I saw, or see- so it is with the personal, and maybe why he is not better known as an artist? Rare to find someone who has something to say, we are lucky to have his work, that he has found a way, and the means to display what he must feel ardently needs it. A work of voice- unusual in the purely visual arts- its extraordinary fulfillment sits besides the fuller void. |
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