Philadelphia Wireman:
"In the late 1970s {alternate: in 1982 an art student found} a stockpile of over a thousand distinctive wire sculptures were found in cardboard boxes on the street in a slowly-gentrifying neighborhood in South Philadelphia. The works consist of different gauges of wire wrapped around everyday found objects and materials such as food packaging, umbrella parts, tape, batteries, pens, nuts and bolts, nails, foil, coins, toys, watches, eyeglasses, tools, and jewelry. {The sculptures were first exhibited in 1985 and have been shown in many museums in the United States and Europe since.}
The maker, who remains unidentified, possessed an astonishing ability to isolate and communicate the concepts of power and energy through his selection and transformation of these ordinary materials. The pieces are often compared to African fetish objects and other ritualized, vernacular traditions, but resonate equally with historical and contemporary art practices. The collection has come to be regarded as an important discovery in the field of self-taught art.
[the artwork] ... appears to be the creation of one male artist, due to the strength involved in manipulating often quite heavy-gauge wire into such tightly-wound nuggets. The dense construction of the work, despite a modest range of scale and materials, is singularly obsessive and disciplined in design: a wire armature or exoskeleton firmly binds a bricolage of found objects, including plastic, glass, food packaging, umbrella parts, tape, rubber, batteries, pens, leather, reflectors, nuts and bolts, nails, foil, coins, toys, watches, eyeglasses, tools, and jewelry.
Bricolage: construction or creation from a diverse range of available things - [excellent art gallery verbiage]
See other artists from this New York Art Gallery:
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