RP338 Becoming the Sculpture

 RP338 Becoming the Sculpture

We use art to convey our thoughts, opinions, and experiences. It's something that can help us reach out and form bonds with our fellow human beings. But why should art be limited to a canvas, book, or film reel? Why can't it cover four walls and a ceiling, or expand to the size of a building? Well, with installation art, it can.
Installation art was born out of the conceptual art movement of the 1970s. Conceptual art is the belief that the ideas associated with a piece of art are more important than the aesthetic or how it looks. A good piece of conceptual art will make us think. It won't necessarily stun us with its beauty.
Think of installation art as taking the concept of sculpture and turning it inside out. Usually, when we examine a sculpture, we are on the outside looking in. However, in the case of installation art, the art piece is all around us. In a sense, we become the sculpture.
Sunflower Seeds is a great example of installation art. It involved the artist spreading millions of porcelain sunflower seeds across the floor of London's Tate Modern. Each unique seed was hand-painted in a small workshop in China. The overall aesthetic contrasts the quaintness of being painted by hand with the harsh industrial environment of the Tate Modern, which was formerly a power station.
Néle Azevedo is another renowned installation artist. She travels around the world creating hundreds of miniature ice sculptures of people. Of course, it's inevitable that her creations will melt as soon as temperatures warm up, but that's exactly the point. Néle molds her melting men to raise awareness about the threat of global warming.
Minimum Monument by Néle Azevedo
There are lots of other installation artists out there trying to pull us into the sculpture. Patrick Dougherty uses sticks and twigs to build huge houses, huts, monuments, and even highways in the open air. In France, Guillaume Reymond creates an impression of massive robots using heaps of used cars and trucks. Anything is possible when the world is your canvas.