THE PANSY STUDIES, 2013
Installation: Remise (locomotive garage), Main Station, Zürich, Switzerland.
Dimensions variable.
Various materials including: Aluminum foil, ash, ceramic, chain-fall, clay, copper, fabric, lighting, limestone, marble, metal, pallets, paper, plaster, rabbit skin glue, salvaged gravestones, sand, sandstone, shelving, wall paper paste, wax, wire, wood. Project sponsored in part by the Remise and the Swiss National Railroad.
Next to the Main Station in Zürich in the cavernous Remise, a disused space where locomotives once were repaired, where iron tracks remain imbedded in the concrete floor, sculptor Nicholas Micros presents models and studies for a monumental relief sculpture he will create using industrial clay and then fire in the Schumacher and Hochdorf ceramic building block factories in Switzerland.
Curiously, relief sculpture, an old staple of the statue maker, is a largely neglected in art today. The proposed work entitled Pansy (a quaint American slang term for a less than manly man) will measure 10 x 15 feet and depict an ice skating hermaphroditic figure who smokes a pipe. The mixed-sex figure of myth (child of Hermes and Aphrodite) will be engulfed in a ring of Pansies, a common flower and a symbol for free thought. The figure presents representations of matter and light, destruction and hope: In one hand a model of the uranium form hidden inside the first atomic bomb, and in the other, an old fashioned lantern. The work is inspired by two stylistically opposite masterpieces from entirely different epochs by two great American sculptors: Daniel Chester French´s figurative upright bronze memorial relief Death and the Sculptor (1893) and Isamu Noguchi´s abstract granite horizontal relief Momo Taro (1977). Each works represent the apex and terminus of the art of their respective eras.
During the daily working process in the studio, the artist moved spontaneously from one found material to the other. Much depended on chance: One day hard stone and metal were shaped, the next, soft fabric or papier machè.
In Pansy, Micros continues a longstanding investigation of “traditional” sculptural forms and materials, hierarchies and received notions of manhood. He works like a monument maker who prepares for and executes grand commissions. Technically, he creates, preserves, destroys and recreates at the same time. Like a modernist, he works directly and robustly with materials himself. Strong figurative and abstract imagery are often juxtaposed.
Stasis and movement are symbolically explored. In earlier works, figures are positioned on round bases (Lullaby, Rifleman) and express a cyclical return. In Pansy the free style pattern created on the ice as the figure endlessly skates over its path, forms a large abstract expressionist-like drawing. Movement is however bordered by the frame. An animal will appear in the scene with the figure, creating a composition similar to annunciation images from Christian art. Due to the size of the projected work, the relief will be broken into moveable pieces to facilitate firing in the kiln. The finished panel will be refitted for installation and the pattern of the cracks will be a visible, important part of the work.
Although the relief will be made with common brick clay, the studies are made of materials found laying about the artist’s studio. These include: aluminum foil, ash, ceramic, a chain- fall, clay, copper, fabric, lighting, limestone, marble, metal, pallets, paper, plaster, rabbit skin glue, salvaged gravestones, sand, sandstone, shelving, wall paper paste, wax, wire and wood. The studies draw freely on diverse imagery that may appear in the work such as lanterns, animals, anatomical details, flowers and the oddly beautiful abstract form hidden in the first atomic bomb.
In order to create a studio-storage atmosphere in the raw space of the Remise, the works will be presented informally on tables, shelves and pallets. In general, the pedestal will be targeted for experimentation and play. Doubling back on received notions of material hierarchies, many of the studies are fashioned from stuff more permanent than the proposed relief.
The exhibition is an homage to sculpture, materials and the joyful work of hand and mind, but also questions and extends the nature of the sculptural study and argues the case for it to be viewed as an independent art form as well. Rodin’s bronze Gate of Hell relief comes to mind. Although it was never installed at its intended site or even cast in bronze in the artists lifetime, it became a kind of chalkboard of ideas for the sculptor and inspired many independent and vital works.
The Pansy Studies draw freely from the history of sculpture and creates a sprawling, haphazard, second hand shop-like installation too. Contrasting forms, concepts, textures and colors exist effortlessly side-by-side. It is suspended in a no mans land between figuration/abstraction, intuition/theory, creation/destruction, nature/man, painting/sculpture and tradition/avant-garde.
Some works will be created in the studio just for the show and later destroyed. Taking advantage of the workshop character of the Remise, the artist will continue to form new larger temporary studies in clay and plaster during the exhibition as well, a reminder of labors once performed there. Further studies will be created even after the larger “monument” is complete. The work group appears to have no discernable end.
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