|
Curriculum Vitae
Solo Exhibitions
2009 “Potential Sculpture,” The CCA South Gallery, Oakland, CA
Group Exhibitions
2012 "41st Marin Designers Showcase," with a new leaf gallery | sculpturesite, Belvedere, CA
2010 San Francisco Art Fair, with Sculpturesite Gallery, San Francisco, CA
2009 Sculpturesite Gallery, San Francisco, CA
2009 “Oaxifornia,” La Casa De La Ciudad, Oaxcaca, Mexico
2009 CCA Baccalaureate Exhibition, The CCA Nave, San Francisco, CA
2009 “Crackles of Conscience,” The CCA Bruce Gallery, San Francisco CA
2009 WASC and NASAD Accreditation Exhibition, CCA Nave, San Francisco, CA
2008 “Spheres, Shovels and the Sublime,” The CCA Bruce Gallery, San Francisco CA
2008 “Show #2,” The CCA Bruce Gallery, San Francisco, CA
2007 “Best Of Junior Review,” The CCA Oliver Arts Center, Oakland, CA
2007 CCAC: A Class Act Joyce Gordon Gallery, Oakland, CA
2007 Looking Through North and South Galleries at CCA, Oakland, CA
2007 Show #1 The CCA North Gallery, Oakland CA
2007 The Other Side of Beauty The CCA Center Gallery, Oakland CA
2007 In Dialogue Swarm Gallery, Oakland CA
Education
2009 California College of the Arts, Oakland, CA, BFA in Glass
Statement
In 1930 the American sculptor Alexander Calder was visiting Piet Mondrian, the painter, in Paris. Mondrian had tacked a series of colored pieces of paper on the wall, mocking up a design for an artwork. Calder was impressed by the way Mondrian had reduced form into flat planes of primary colors. He suggested that Mondrian consider adding movement to the forms.
"What if those rectangles oscillated?" he asked. Mondrian rejected the idea, sternly replying, "My painting is already very fast."
Thus Calder soon took his own advice and began experimenting with movement in his work. This work evolved to become the now popular mobile, and Calder was one of the earliest artists to create what is known as kinetic sculpture. The first time I remember seeing Calder's work was in my junior year of high school. We were studying his art in books and slide shows. The work captivated me and I stayed hours after school for weeks, building mobiles out of paper, wire and clay. He became my most beloved role model.
I do not remember seeing his work live until his retrospective at the San Francisco MoMA some years ago. I remember looking up at a giant, ostensibly still mobile, at least 15 feet wide. I focused in on a single wire arm at the tip that seemed to move independently of the mass containing it. Then as if in response to that movement, another element began to spin in a distant part of the mobile at a different speed. This dialogue of movement widened my field of focus, allowing me to apprehend the mobile as a whole. When I did so I could perceive the entire sculpture spinning and shifting and the smaller parts twisting within that. This awesome articulation almost knocked me off my feet more than once that day.
I have often wondered what is it about Calder's work that I found so compelling. I think that the brief dialogue between Calder and Mondrian, and the entity of what is known as kinetic sculpture reveals a yearning on behalf of the artist to reveal something greater, something more subtle, something more essential to a form that its colors and shapes. I think the drive is to reveal the livingness, the energy of the world. For Mondrian this meant suggestion of movement - "very fast." For Calder, this meant actual movement - "kinetic."
Inspired by Calder, I got a vision of a floating mobile. The vision held my mental eye captive. When I started producing them I found that they had the same effect in a concrete form. That is, the revelation of livingness. Unlike this work of Calder and Mondrian who were focused on movement to reveal livingness, my work, relatively, is quite still. In some ways this work is an extension of the work of Calder, the Neo-Plasticists, and the Dynamic Plasticists.
In other ways it is a reversal or dissolution of their work. In it, I intend to realize a more subtle, or essential quality of energy- the energy before movement, before colors and shapes. Where mobiles are at energy's effect, potentials are at source. I am creating sculpture that literally has energy stored in it versus just showing the energy that is around (mobiles don't hold energy, they reveal the energy already in space).
The sculptures actually contain a quantifiable amount of energy that can be calculated via a derivation of Hook's Law and the equation for potential energy, the energy of position. It is this energy of what is about to happen that gives the work its brimming quality. I call it Potential Sculpture because it allows us to see the energy inherent in stillness, something so many of us have forgotten in this busy culture focused on doing and doing and doing - our "cultural kineticism". This work is here to remind us all of the wild, expansive and incalculable potential inherent in each moment. Zak Timan
2009
|
