When you look at the human body, you can get a rough idea of the skeleton beneath, but it's nearly impossible to see how the bones work together, how they function together. Similarly, when I look at a building, I wonder where the structures are welded beneath, where the bones are and how they interact to keep the building functioning and alive.
During the same trip to the St. Nicholas breaker, I saw a building which captured that idea better than any before. Like a body shortly after death it was somehow still erect, despite the fact that it was decaying and no longer functioning.
I was able to find
work by Jason Taylor, exploring similar concepts, but underwater instead of above land. He goes says, "The sculpture proposes growth, chance, and natural transformation. It shows how time and environment impact on and shape the physical body."
Andy Goldsworthy also speaks of decay in his work: "Movement, change, light, growth and decay are the lifeblood of nature, the energies that I try to tap through my work. I need the shock of touch, the resistance of place, materials and weather, the earth as my source. Nature is in a state of change and that change is the key to understanding. I want my art to be sensitive and alert to changes in material, season and weather. Each work grows, stays, decays. Process and decay are implicit. Transience in my work reflects what I find in nature."
What does that say? Everything is temporary - change is implicit. Dialectics can be applied to everything: thought, processes, buildings, it's an evolution in itself. Decay and death are important processes which let us learn and grow from them.
2 comments:
I thought your presentation was very interesting, especially the statues underwater. At first, I though they were bodies from a sunken ship or something. It was pretty creepy because I guess we don't really associate humans and water, especially really deep water. We love travelling and going to be beach and such but sunken ships are suddenly mysterious and dangerous and for the longest time we believed there could be no life in the deepest parts of the ocean. It was interesting to see a man at a desk underwater, very cool juxtaposition.
Ya the statue piece is cool... Also the building is really interesting, it is as if it was exposed to an x-ray or something, or maybe even something from the Sims.
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