Lot 5

Fair Market Value $3000

  unsigned; bears artist name on label verso; in circular format

38 x 38 x 1

 photograph on metal

Alexander Caldwell’s sculptures are immaculate in execution and finish. Caldwell embraces curves and right angles, round volumes and flat planes where minimalism meets pop art. Squares, spheres, hemispheres and cylinders are the building blocks of his formal vocabulary. Each sculpture is painted a single bright colour or coated with a meticulous metal finish. In the recently completed “discs” he uses a colour flop enamel that changes colour as you walk by the work.  Caldwell works mostly with found materials, although he will cast elements he wants to repeat. He employs colour to remove shape as far as possible from its origins in functional objects – pipe in various diameters, pipe elbows, metal hemispheres – and industrial materials – steel, stainless steel and aluminum. The applied colour is either automotive or oilfield paint that, along with a little filler, hides the joins and welds under the flawless skin of a surface of colour that is impervious to weather. Colour as an aspect of sculpture is new for Caldwell. His last series used unpainted found metal in onstructions of assembled parts that were reminiscent of the American sculptor David Smith and earlier modernists. Within the new esthetic context, the found metal pointed to its previous industrial life.  Caldwell says, the colour that transforms the industrial origins of his materials has become so important to the simpler shapes of his new work that it’s as if the metal has become an armature for the paint

Donated by the artist

alexandercaldwell.wordpress.com

Represented by

Paul Kuhn Gallery

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