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Huiyao Fu on Eva Hesse: Lost for Words and Louise Bourgeois: Conversation with Frances Morris
4 November, 2022
Embracing the mess and absurdity, commonplace objects and materials are stacked and elevated, and monstrous structure appears. The process and composition of Phyllida Barlow’s sculpture completely alter the perception of the individual objects and the space it occupies. The enormous scale, which in common practice implies a sense of monumentality, is conversely the result of stacked cardboards, woods and rubber which are at the risk of collapse; and the familiarity with the objects in everyday use erases the last hint of solemnity provoked by the scale. Barlow’s sculptures are usually dismantled and recycled after exhibitions, maintaining a ‘mobile’ relationship with the process of making and un-making sculpture without trapped by the desire of monumentality or persistence of meaning. Not surprisingly this seemingly contemporary frame of mind has prevailed since antiquity. In the Basilica of San Salvatore in Spoleto, materials of various origins are reused and reworked from the façade reliefs to the architrave of the portal. The work is beyond the aspiration of a master’s mind but an unceasing series of out-of-control process of both gaining and losing characters and values throughout the transformations. The process itself becomes the meaning that accumulates and connects to all the times.