| Reviews. MAG 12. Jan-Feb 08 |
| Written by Dinorah Perez Rementeria |
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Page 1 of 5 Sculpture Key West“At land’s end, where the tip of Florida’s curving archipelago meets the open sea, an enterprising group of Key Westers regularly mount an exhibition of public sculpture,” says professor and critic Paula Harper in her report Sculpture on the Edge, published in Art in America magazine. No walls are necessary to showcase art. Imagine we live in a place where there is no museum or gallery, and all art pieces have to be made and kept outside, facing the ocean, the clouds, the sun. Imagine one is a fisherman or a worker who lives in Key West and wakes up every morning with the desire of seeing the kind of art that can be touched, smelled, sensed, without having the fear of being scolded by museum guards or gallery directors. Key West has gifted its inhabitants and visitors with an event that not only gives them the opportunity to see art from an ecological perspective, but it also invites them to appreciate nature from an artistic point of view.  Applications for the artists to participate in Sculpture Key West are released annually. The thirteenth edition will take place at West Martello Tower and Fort Zachary Taylor State Park, opening January 20th and February 24th respectively. This year, the jury selected 34 artists who would develop their projects in accordance with the possibilities offered by the sites. Some sculptures arise from the ground like pine trees, seeds or flowers would grow in their natural environment. Others, however, have been designed by the artists to change the skyline’s perspective, modify the disposition of biological elements, or simply alter the general view people have on their place of living. The artworks are distributed throughout the space, in the air, among the weeds, behind the rocks, over the waves. Made of fiberglass, epoxies and other materials, an herbivore dinosaur floats quietly within the water. This piece, by New York artist Cameron Gainer, allows us to travel in time to the epoch in which these great vertebrates existed. Luisa Caldwell presents Jetfire, an airplane with an accentuated minimal appearance that is ready to take off the ground. Sky Catchers by Susan Rodgers constitutes a mischievous allegory of the sky scrapers. Five high structures made of steel and copper stand in front of the ocean as if they were ruins of an old building. John Martini’s piece Birdland depicts three ethnic human-like figures dialoguing with each other. The viewer is immediately brought back into the cosmogonic beliefs found in Latin-American legends and mythological texts. The End of the World is perhaps the most poetic work in Sculpture Key West this year. The sculpture, by German artist Monika Goetz, successfully integrates with the Floridian landscape by incorporating the horizon line as its main concept: the exact point where the ocean and the sky meet. www.sculpturekeywest.com |
