PAST EXHIBITION
WorkSpace: Carol Bove: “setting” for A. Pomodoro
OPENS
July 21, 2006
CLOSES
October 01, 2006
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About the Exhibit
July 21 – October 1, 2006
New York-based artist Carol Bove (pronounced Boh-VAY) creates elegant sculptural installations that explore the cultural, spiritual, social, and political preoccupations of the 1960s and 1970s. For her exhibition at the Blanton, Bove has merged her interests in history and sculpture by making two miniature “sculpture gardens.” In the larger of the two installations, a sculpture (c. 1963) by the Italian artist Arnaldo Pomodoro serves as the anchor for a history of 20th-century art narrated by an array of disparate objects: pieces of driftwood and steel, peacock feathers, railroad ties, and concrete cubes. These objects represent forms that are associated with the Surrealists and Constructivists of the early to mid-20th century but that influenced artistic movements of the 1960s and 1970s as well. The smaller installation likewise serves as a “museum within a museum,” but it also recreates a specific celestial event. On March 2, 2006, at 9 PM, the canopy of bronze rods suspended over the “sculpture garden” aligned perfectly with the stars congregating over the ceiling of the Berlin gallery in which the work was then being exhibited. The installation is, literally, a horoscope: a view (“scope”) onto an hour (“hora”). The term also applies to Bove’s work as a whole, which similarly provides a view onto time—in the case of the pieces displayed at the Blanton, a glimpse onto a slightly uncanny history of the 20th century.