The Traveler

Issue date: 4/8/09 Section: Lifestyles

Media Credit: Veronica Pucci

Media Credit: Veronica Pucci "Physical Reminders" features the work of seven artists who have created sculptures as "reminders" of time and space. From top: Greg Pond's "For Pirates" and David Gurman's "Reflector Project: Tigris-Potomac IKONOS Satellite View."

In academia, sculptures have relied on their physicality to express meaning and communicate ideas. The art form has also paved the way for performance, video, electronic and extended media areas to exist and develop. As sculptures have progressed in the modern world, sculptures have deviated into current trends.

"Physical Reminders" features the work of seven distinguished artists, including Michael Jones McKean, Claire Watkins, Greg Pond, David Gurman, Micki Watanabe Spiller, Mike Wsol and Lain York, who approach sculpture as physical indicators of time, space, identity and invisible faces. The object is a point of departure for these artists, according to a statement of Bethany Springer, a UA assistant professor of art.

Springer, who curated the exhibition, said it was important to bring contemporary sculptures to the university and celebrate them.

"I wanted the students to have physical examples of sculptures," Springer said. "I am interested in communicating ideas through visual forms. I think of how viewers move through space, live in time and how they use physical contact."

Two years ago, she was asked to curate an exhibit and was looking at different artists' Web sites.

On Watkins' Web site, the artist writes, "I am fascinated by systems found within the body and the parallel structures located outside of it; the human brain and circuit boards, nerve systems and trees…Electricity has a visual presence in my work, traveling through motors, lights, wires, microcontrollers and drawings that are circuit boards. I want to expose the invisibility of electricity, a physical reminder of its presence."

Watkins' words resonated with Springer and birthed the "Physical Reminders" collection.

Elements of painting, photography, design and architecture collide with kinetics, sound, light and real-time information in the same space.

The pieces in the exhibition "start with tangible, physical objects, but dissolve into other formats that not only rely on sight but can include other sensory levels, such as audio, video and sound," Springer said.

"For Pirates" by Greg Pond is a piece that has a microphone attached to the object to absorb sound and recreate what it hears.

And as the title of the exhibition suggests, the term "reminder" connotes the way in which objects can communicate their ideas and lose their meaning over time.

Although Pond's piece has the capability of recording what it hears and reenacting the sound, it loses the sound over time.

"'Physical Reminders' speaks through the absence of objects," Springer said.

"The word 'reminder' relates to a loss, in a sense, and forgetting.

For the artists, the objects act as a point of departure. (The sculptures) are blurring the lines of the presences and absences of the objects."

"Physical Reminders" will be showcased in the Fine Arts Center Gallery through April 15. The exhibit was part of last month's grand UA "Sculpture Symposium."

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