Tanny

Comment

Comment by Resident Curator on June 15, 2011 at 9:35pm

Curator’s Comment:

(Tanny) The Works leaves me perplexed.  It appears to be a keen, didactic rendering of a band saw on a very large scale.  The ordinariness of the object compels the viewer to scrutinize the mundane, and yet it has a vaguely “off” quality that seems to be poking fun of its own magnitude.  “The Works” also implies a sarcastic versatility, and casual affiliation.  I suppose for some it represents the creative process.  Not elevated to the iconic or fetishistic level of a Jim Dine tool, it nonetheless possesses a sensitively modeled background space, with a tiny, precariously placed drip of (oil?) on the crank mechanism.  It is a fond depiction, but ultimately ironic as well.  Your three dimensional pieces represented on this site have a ‘truth in materials’ formalistic approach, which could be conversely applied to this drawing.  By revealing the artists tools the illusion is stripped of all extraneousness fodder, and we are confronted with the plain physical and profane activity of making art.