Rachel Whiteread

Rachel Whiteread is most widely known for House (1993) in London, where she cast the inside of an old Victorian style house that was going to be demolished.  The cast was made out of concrete that stood in the public for a few months before it was bulldozed to the ground.  Whiteread had been looking for a condemned domestic building that she could memorialize, since these were being demolished by the thousands, authorized by the government.  By casting the actual negative space inside the house in concrete, Whiteread memorialized not only the house itself, but memories, space and the structure the house once held.  In 1997, Whiteread was commissioned to make the Holocaust Memorial for Vienna, in which the sculpture resembles an inverted library.  It is a concrete cast of rows of books, spines turned to the inside, as well as two handle-less doors at one end of the building.  Viewers are not able to read the books nor enter the space.  Whiteread ultimately constructed the epitome of a heroic monument, embodying and commemorating loss.  She also works in a variety of materials, ranging from resin, plaster, concrete and rubber, to cast spaces within and around objects.  It has been said that Whiteread has done an incredible job of making the “invisible visible”.  Casting has become her language that she has been studying for over 15 years.  In her earlier career, she looked to sarcophagi and volcanoes as inspiration, as well as other objects and monuments that were completely elemental and unpredictable.  Interestingly, although Whiteread has worked very large for a long time, she is ready to begin working small and manageable once more. 

http://www.sculpture.org.uk/biography/RachelWhiteread/

Harper, Glenn, and Twylene Moyer. Conversations on Sculpture. Hamilton, N. J.: Isc, 2007.

Collins, Judith. Sculpture Today. London: Phaidon, 2007. Print.

  

Tara Donovan

Tara Donovan received her MFA from VCU in 1999, and in that same year had her first solo museum show in Washington, DC.  Donovan reassess the legacies of Pop and Minimalism by using mass produced materials such as drinking straws, Styrofoam cups, toothpicks, and tar paper.  While Donovan’s sculptures range from extraordinarily light to obscenely heavy, they always evoke natural forms, ranging from fog banks, clouds, water, etc.  This could be interpreted as a continued nostalgia for nature; by returning to her labor-intensive processes, she reaffirms the importance of the physical world in the creation of sculpture.  Tara Donovan is noted for letting a chosen material do exactly what it wants to do, and not forcing it to act a certain way.  For example, in her piece Haze (1999) Donovan was attracted to the “strawness” of the straws, their verticality and hollow core.  She arranged the straws in such a way that the material would comply, allowing the millions of straws to become opaque when placed in a large group.  I believe this is where Donovan has success as an artist; she understands how the material wants to be manipulated, and then stays true to that decision.  Her use of multiples reinforces the nature vs. mass produced items that she so often juxtaposes within her work.  Another juxtaposition is improvisation versus intention.  Donovan claims her work is very improvisational; boundaries are set for her assistants, there is no drawing involved, and, ultimately, the material dictates the final form.  When asked in an interview “what do you find to be the most interesting thing about sculpture today”, Donovan replies, “I’m interested in my own process, in the set of rules I’ve created.  As far as sculpture today, there’s definitely good work out there.  For a while it didn’t seem like people were making things, but I think people are getting back to making things”.

Harper, Glenn. Conversations on Sculpture, ISC 2007.

Collins, Judith.  Sculpture Today, Phaidon, 2007.

Marc Quinn

Marc Quinn became apart of the YBA in the early 90s, and is where he became noticed as a contemporary artist.  His earlier work was rooted in history and art history, with a use of contemporary and traditional material.  During this time he sculpted portraits of people such as Marie Antoinette and Louis XVI out of uncooked bread.  He then baked the bread, letting the forms distort, and then ultimately cast them in bronze.  Quinn also examines transformation process, both physiological and emotional.  He uses his own body to express this content, transcending the accidental nature of his own being.  One example of this is Self, in which he sculpted a self-portrait and then cast it in 5 liters of his own blood.  Incarnate is of the same nature, except he makes blood sausage (with his own blood), and lays it on a bed of salt.  These pieces also address issues of life and death, specifically a cyclical pattern that ultimately leads to a new life.  Following these works, Quinn focused on the externalization and depiction of internal, spiritual and distressing emotional processes; his enduring addiction to alcohol is derivative to this broad idea.  Emotional Detox (1995) is one example of this, along with The Seven Deadly Sins (1995) and Fear of Fear (1994-95). 

            Quinn’s use of material is never accidental; he seems to want to make his viewers aware of the way in which certain materials in our culture acquire meaning.  For example, the use of lead in his work carries much symbolism; the goal to turn lead into gold is a metaphor for not only the purification of material, but of the human spirit as well.  Emotional Detox relates to this idea as well, touching on the complex and, at times, painful relationship between body and mind.  Quinn’s well known body of work using disabled men and women as subject matter is another way he expresses the problematic relationship between body and mind.  By sculpting amputees and quadra/parapalegics in a very traditional material and style, he immortalizes his subjects, allowing the public to perhaps assess the relationship of their body and mind.

Mengham, Rod.  Marc Quinn: Recent Sculpture. Nai Publishers, 2006.

Collins, Judith.  Sculpture Today.  Phaidon, 2007.

www.marcquinn.com