Smoke Device, Aluminum Scrap Metal. 20 tonnes

2.7m x 2.7m x 2.7m

 

Black – mysterious, authoritative, empty. An absence of colour, the primordial void. Black disguises what is and what lies beneath, absorbing and drawing into its powerful abyss of symbolism. The sense of emptiness in such a large scale work is palpable, evoking at once a sense of potentiality and possibility. What has been, what is, and what will it become yet?

 

The formal qualities of this work highlight a study of contradictions - amorphous yet clearly defined as a geometric shape; transient yet monumental; malleable but strong. The exploration of these juxtapositions is an attempt to make sense of the disparity and divergence that we so often encounter in cityscape and urban living, and this in turns makes the city an unfathomable living experience, shrouding the individual in the mystery of being.

 

Another key element of this work is its reference to temporality, in the burst of smoke which appears and fades, in the scrap metal which was once a part of some construction or some edifice. Bundled up in neat individual cubes which are in turn stack as a larger collective cube, a form within a form, what do these forgotten materials tell of their lives, and the lives they have impacted? Stripped of their previous being, what is to become of them?

 

It becomes after it became.