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Phil Douglis | all galleries >> Galleries >> Gallery Thirty Three: Using light and color to define and contrast textures > Quantum Cloud XXXII, Denver Art Museum, Denver, Colorado, 2007
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05-JUL-2007

Quantum Cloud XXXII, Denver Art Museum, Denver, Colorado, 2007

One of the most striking sculptures in the new wing of the Denver Art Museum is Antony Gormely’s anonymous figure made of stainless steel rods. I found a vantage point that allowed me to relate the posture of the figure to the design of the alcove in which it stands. The rods create a fragmented texture, some of them picking up light that intensifies the sculpture’s sense of explosive fragmentation. The art seems right at home in its abstracted surroundings, and this image defines that relationship.

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Phil Douglis14-Jul-2007 06:07
What you say here, Ceci, is exactly what triggered this image. I, too, saw the sculpture as a study in fragmentation and suffering. It is the story of life itself. We are pulled in so many directions at once, we are ridden with guilt, and we both create and expend energy. To what end, this image asks? And thanks for observing the play of light -- the brightest rod seems, as you say, to pierce the heart.
Guest 14-Jul-2007 03:47
What an amazing photograph, beautiful, strange, gorgeously lit, wonderfully "angled," and seeming to speak about the nature of metaphysics. Apparently we attract the same sort of energy that we give out, and this feels like a magnificent metaphor for someone whose thoughts, feelings and emotions are filled with MEA CULPA, so that the Universe has responded with symbolic pins or bits of metal to cluster onto this figure. It is attracting sharp objects as though magnetized, in huge numbers, and the almosts crucified stance adds to a feeling of being tortured and overwhelmed by rods. There's even a rod which seems to pierce the body at heart level, as though this was a "final blow." There is even a feeling of the "crown of thorns", and of great suffering in this picture. Most powerful!
Phil Douglis11-Jul-2007 05:44
Thanks, Jenene, for your comment on the way the sculpture is displayed here. The critics have generally praised the new museum building's architecture, but many feel that while it is an exciting building, it often gets in the way of much of the art it tries to display. This sculpture, however, is the one piece that seems to perfectly match the design of the building -- this corner alcove setting creates tension, and the explosive fragmentation of Gormely's figure is ideally suited for such a spot as this. In this case, form and function mesh beautifully, and I tried to express that relationship in this image.
JSWaters11-Jul-2007 03:44
The sculpture tucked into a corner - a corner in which it is waiting to explode and escape from. The rods have an undeniable energy, barely contained it their alcove. A comment about human nature and it's distaste for confinement?
Jenene
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