Searle, Adrian, “Hepsworth Sculpture Prize Review – A Brilliant Beginning”, October 20,
2016
White foam heaves itself up through transparent tubes, forming tottering
columns that collapse in slow, serpentine cascades, subsiding into soapy
clouds that melt into nothing in the circular pool below. First made in the
1960s, David Medalla’s Cloud Canyons remain ephemeral and beautiful
things, in constant flux between form and formlessness. It is like observing the
growth and decay of alien fungi.
Medalla, born in the Philippines in 1942, is one of the four shortlisted artists
in the inaugural Hepworth sculpture prize exhibition, held every two years
and open to British or UK-based artists of any age. Opening on 21 October, the
show celebrates the fifth anniversary of the Hepworth Wakefield, one of our
best regional museums. A panel picks the artists, while an international jury
choses the winner, who will receive a £30,000 prize, announced next month.
Medalla has been a presence in the art world for as long as I can remember.
He has been everywhere and known everyone, from Fernand Léger to Man
980 MADISON AVENUE NEW YORK, NY 10075
(212) 980-0700
|
601 SOUTH ANDERSON STREET
WWW.VENUSOVERMANHATTAN.COM
LOS ANGELES, CA 90023
(323) 980-9000
Ray, from Lygia Clark to James Dean. He is the art world’s Zelig. You’ve got to
watch that man.
In the middle of a further gallery, a tangle of golden wire – suspended on
precarious lengths of bamboo and powered by a motor atop the trunk of a
silver birch – slowly rotates on a bed of sand, leaving combed furrows that are
perpetually drawn and erased. Surrounding this folly, first made in 1963, hang
stretched hammocks of thin, coloured fabric, appended with reels of cotton.
The audience can use these to stitch drawings and designs on to the lengths of
More lengths of fabric – with stories printed, sewn and painted on to them –
line the walls. Here is Emily Brontë, there is an invented myth of a virgineating crocodile. Delicate, touching and wan, Medalla’s art is as hard to grasp
as the soapsuds climbing and falling next door, where a long poem called The
Bubble Machine is also pinned to the wall. The poem itself is a delightful,
painful spume of reminiscence.
What has reading a poem, or soapsuds, or an invitation to sew, or a series of
images and stories, got to do with sculpture? In the poem, James Dean licks
popcorn from a young Medalla’s face. Further on, the young artist visits a
brewery in Edinburgh, watching the froth bubbling in copper vats. And he
remembers (or is it all an invention – Medalla was three when the second
world war ended) a young man who was in the same Filipino resistance cell as
the artist’s father, fighting the Japanese, lying shot and dying, “tiny bubbles
coming out of his mouth/ tiny rainbows / mixed with blood”. The poem makes
you look at Medalla’s work differently. His art is a casual affair, but it is
impossible for me not to be touched by it, even though it often looks like
nothing much.
[…]
Art needs more interpretations than it does explanations. None of these artists
make puzzles to be solved. Understanding is frequently overrated. What a rich,
varied and contrary exhibition this is. After a bit, I forgot it was a prize. Here,
the best art and the best sculpture might not be synonymous. It is impossible.
Give the prize to Medalla, who probably needs it most.
The winner of the Hepworth sculpture prize will be announced on 17
November. The exhibition of work by the shortlisted artists runs at Hepworth
Wakefield until 19 February.
2