An Interesting Distraction

Obviously, I'm very interested in textures and surfaces. It has become the content of my current work. Well, while being redirected through a business park to enter the parking lot of the Lincolnwood Lowes, I found myself distracted by a sculpture. I was in a hurry, so I reluctantly passed it by... did my shopping and headed off to my next errand. But the piece stuck in my head. The  following week, I found myself back at the Lowes nursery [I have a thing for garden centers] but this time, I stopped. I parked my car, crossed the street and went over to get a closer look at the work. 

The surface is quiet wonderful. It's made up of large aluminum rods which seem to be bunched together to create the intended shape. As I approached the sculpture, I thought it was an abstraction based on a torso. But after seeing the title, it was clear that the work is more conceptual then abstract. The artist is Josh Garber and the piece is titled "Tug" from 2006. From the Robert Steele Gallery website, Garber explains...

"My work is about interpreting gestures through mappings of coordinates. It is ... influenced by digital pixilation which dissects images with thousands of dots. Similarly, I use thousands of aluminum bars to map and then construct each piece."

You can find more of Garber's work at the Zolla/Lieberman Gallery in Chicago or at the Robert Steele Gallery in New York.