January 19, 2011

Todays installment shows the piece finished structurally. Now, Henrique will decide how and what to cover it with and the piece will be finished.

I got to try!

Well, Henrique has succeeded in tearing down the "root" that wrapped its way around one of the support columns in the colum.  It's been replace by a new coil that droops lower, and I agree, looks better.  Best of all -- I got to have a turn drilling some of the support wood into place.  So, I earned my first splinter and gained a new appreciation for how the wood is placed to create this understructure.

In addition, we are positioning the "paintings" by Sandile Zulu.  I use the quotation marks because he works with fire, not paint.  Tomorrow, we are considering moving "Old Bones, Old Genes" 6 inches to the left.  We want to position a third work, "Large Colon(y) Brownprint" first to have a better visual of the overall harmony.  Sandile will be checking the blog, too, so that he can let us know what he thinks of the placement.

January 18, 2011

Today, we learn that the basic structure has been completed and now it's time to make some decisions as to what colors to cover it with.

January 17, 2011

As the piece begins to be attached to the walls Henrique takes time out to thank his "team" of museum staff and volunteers. THANKS EVERYONE!!!

Working through the weekend

In honor of the great Martin Luther King Jr. and on his holiday, we've got volunteers, staff members and one Brazilian artist coming together to fabricate one pretty wild installation.  Henrique's background is as a painter.  To date, his installations have explored notions of surface -- the surface of a canvas, skin, fences etc.  Even when he's created fully 3-dimensional sculptures, the tend to look like enormous drops of paint.  For us, however, he has gone fully sculptural and imagined a tangle of roots, or maybe worms -- a la Kevin Bacon in "Tremor."  they are either busting out of the walls or holding them up -- right now, it's not quite clear.

strips of flexi plywood getting spritzed with water to enhance their flexibility

Henrique and volunteer, Walt, extending 2 more "roots" toward the north wall

Henrique has decided he wants to re-do the loop that coils around the column in the gallery, so here all the screws are being pulled out so that we can take it down and start over

We've also started installing Sandile's work, even though he won't arrive until the 22nd.  He works with fire and after months of trying to get a permit for him to burn in the museum, or in a warehouse in the region, or in the studios of a local art school... none of the options proved feasible and we decided to have Sandile make his art works in his own studio in Johannesburg.  He met with Henrique here in Washington DC last December and I went out to South Africa to meet with him, too, so the 3 of us had plenty of time to talk about how he wanted to create works in response to Henrique.  The crates containing his art works arrived a few weeks ago, so we opened them up to make sure the artworks arrived in mint condition and to think through how to hang them.  I've been on the phone most everyday with Sandile, so we've worked out a system that he's approved and the first work is up.  It's a modular, 15-part, 3-dimensional wall piece called "Spinal Diagnosis - a regenerate case no.1" and you can preview it here:



January 16, 2011

First phase done! Here Henrique talks about what's next and how he'll begin to "grow" it towards the walls.

January 14, 2011 -- Getting into a rhythm

In todays installment, Henrique speaks at length of the piece, how it will look when it's complete as well as what there still is to do.