Mind over body

In the Renaissance Society’s current exhibition, The Here and Now, three sculptures by three artists address “the notion of presence—literally, metaphorically, and spiritually,” says the gallery’s educational director, Hamza Walker, AB’88, in the museum notes. Javier Tellez’s helium-balloon “base of the world,” Katrin Sigurdardottir’s high-plain mountain landscape, and Sanford Biggers’s Buddhist bowls each are “an invitation to critically reflect upon one’s relationship to the artwork as it in turn relates to its location.” Exhibited together, they create a more cohesive result, making “concrete the imagination’s bid for transcendence, giving form to the very metaphors that would then allow the imagination to go beyond the material and spatial forms of the gallery, and indeed the artworks themselves. In other words, presence of body is activated only to yield to presence of mind.”

The Here And Now runs through February 20.

By A.M.B.

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Photos (from left to right): Javier Tellez, Socle du Monde (Base of the World), 2005 helium filled vinyl balloon, 60" x 60" x 50"; Sanford Biggers, Hip Hop Ni Sasa Gu (In Fond Memory), 2005, tatami mats, pillows, inscribed Buddhist singing bowls; Katrin Sigurdardottir, High Plane 3, 2005, wood, foam, dimensions variable.

February 4, 2005