Sculpting Time (Sperone Westwater, 2008)

In 2008, Steven Holmes from the Cartin Collection curated an exhibition at Sperone Westwater in New York titled 'Sculpting Time', featuring works by Josef Albers, Andrew Grassie, On Kawara, Giorgio Morandi and Roman Opalka.


In the accompanying catalogue Holmes raises a number of very thoughtful ideas that are close to our own interests. Here's an extract:

"Andrei Tarkovsky's film The Sacrifice begins with a single nine-and-a-half minute scene. In this long, continuous shot, a young boy, mute, helps his father plant a tree in a desolate landscape. While his father, Alexander, works, he tells his son the story of a monk who spent an entire lifetime beginning each day with a walk up the side of a mountain, to carry water to a dead tree. At the monk's death, the tree burst to life. The meaning of the story, as Alexander expresses to his silent son, is that it was not the water that brought the tree to life, but rather the faithful day-in, day-out ritual of bringing the water. The content of the bucket was not important; it was the act of blind devotion, the seemingly desolate and meaningless commitment to a practice, that saved the tree. For Tarkovsky, the artist must make work like the monk carried water - not hoping for meaning or redemption in any one painting, but rather trusting that through the day-in, day-out devotion of the studio, something else emerges that is greater than the sum of the parts."