For his Artpace project, Wanting without needing, Loving without leaning, Bojan Sarcevic continues exploring iconic architectural ornamentation through the tradition of sculpture.
In the space is a single metal object. Thick bars of steel stretch vertically and horizontally to form a U-shaped skeletal structure eight feet tall by ten feet wide. With its rhythmic lines and silent monumentality, the autonomous piece can be read within the legacy of minimalism.
Yet Wanting… infuses modernism with a subjectivity it often avoids. While articulated with clean, spare lines, it is in fact an abstraction of an architectural element from the past. Ideas for the work originated with the steep organic curves of buildings by Eric Mendelsohn from the 1920s, an iconic moment of architecture far-removed from our present built landscape. This connection with cultural history is strengthened through two elegant found/collage drawings of 1950s era women on a nearby wall.
Sarcevic’s alternating use of brass, bronze, and copper on the steel structure references another mode of cultural production often at odds with modernism. Joseph Bueys’ sculptural treatment of copper and other materials with specific social resonance seminally extended art making beyond the physical and into the social realm.
While physically working with the objectivity of classical sculpture, Wanting… bends conventions. Displacing expectations about such art making, it begins a conversation about what sculpture can and should be.
By Kate Green, Assistant Curator
