GESTURES 意
Will Clift
Dear Henrietta and Ora-Ora staff,
November, 2010
How quickly the years have passed since I last exhibited with you in 2007. I think of that exhibition with much fondness and great appreciation for the opportunity and for your efforts. And now I thank you again for this chance to build upon that experience, to bring a new set of sculptures to Ora-Ora, to share the progress that I’ve made during this time, and to take part in Ora-Ora’s winter season. The sculptures I will present in this exhibition are distinct from the last group in several ways. I’ve gained a greater understanding of my medium during these three years, and have come to see that the physical materials I work with are less central to my art than are the more ephemeral ones — balance and gravity. It is these that I aim, day after day and year after year, to master. These are what I use to create a unique relationship between a sculpture and those who view it. These are the tools with which I explore the essence of what sculpture is, and the joy it can bring. This exhibition will include a large portion of my Enclosing Form series — the product of a period of introspection in my life in which I aimed to create physical manifestations of sensations inside of me. The movement and energy in these pieces are subtle, contained, but I hope still powerful. Other sculptures here are expressions of joy, whimsy, and gesture — the suggestion of a dance or music in a static form. As the great architect Santiago Calatrava once wrote, “Gesture is the most elemental, personal translation of our emotion and our desire.” Then there are the sculptures in which I further explore the interactions between form, gravity, and balance: suspended sculpture, as well as work with both suspended and standing components. These are examples of the most recent developments in my work, and are likely the roots from which my future work will grow. This is an exciting, vibrant period in my artistic life, and I very much look forward to sharing it with you in this exhibition and beyond. With best regards,
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SHAPING SPACE Will Clift in 2010 Michael More Anyone who has seen Will Clift’s enthralling sculptures might mistakenly assume they’re produced in a studio, with sawdust in the air and shavings from exotic woods—wenge, padauk, lyptus—scattered all over the floor. That’s right as far as it goes, but still, essentially, wrong. My works begin as small sketches on paper— sometimes no bigger than an inch square. It’s the development of this sketch…that takes the vast majority of time and creative energy. I draw and redraw a sketch over months, sometimes years, until the form fully satisfies me. By the time the sketch reaches its final state, the quality of balance in the work is completely determined. Only when he has a full-scale drawing does he go into his shop, moving “methodically”
to its fabrication in wood using a band saw, wood rasps and files and countless types of sandpaper. Each of these steps is entirely by hand, and some improvisation always takes place throughout the process.
Clift has been making wooden sculptures since he was five years old. As he progressed he has repeatedly tested himself against the demands of scale and complexity. He always meets the most pressing demand he puts upon himself. Before being signed, each piece must stand on its own, freely in space, unsecured by screws, nails, pegs or adhesives, often on a foot no larger than a dime. Since each one rests perfectly on its tiny base, it’s easy to be distracted by their engineering triumph and neglect their triumphant art. An eminent physicist understands both factors.
Dr. Roger Hill, a Guest Scientist at Los Alamos National Laboratory, knows as much as anyone about the complex structural forces in play. He describes Clift’s finely balanced and asymmetrical sculptures as intriguing symbols of the “fine-tuned (highly improbable, arguably miraculous) conditions and broken symmetries that make possible the existence of the physical world.” Consider just one component: gravity. Clift’s sculptures seem not to defy it, but to playfully accept it as one more material factor in the mix of line, weight, trajectory, and the surrounding air. Hill writes: In contemplating the role that gravity plays in these sculptures we experience an example of network thinking: the recognition that the whole is larger than the sum of its parts because of the network of relationships between those parts. Over the years Clift has assembled more than 250 sculptures. Some are suspended from above. Most stand at both attention and at ease with a grace and poise that appears impossible. It seems safe to say no one has ever done this before. Or will, any time soon. Finally it does not matter how Clift’s pieces work as structures, but how his structures work on us. In their simple silent presence, their sheer and sublime grace, they seem neither east nor west, contemporary or classical. They just seem to be there. They just are. Look at Three Twisting Verticals, 2009 (Wenge). Though over a meter and a half high, its three elements are wedged in the air so tightly as to suggest their fusion, giving them the aeronautical trajectory of a rocket during launch. The skill required to even suspend such a large piece to such exquisite tolerances seems daunting. Look at its opposite. Enclosing Form, Reaching Over, 2009 (Wenge) is not about weightless grace but coiled dominating power. This near-oval form recalls the mythic
symbol of a snake perpetually eating its tail. But such thin associations fall away when one comes to study the space isolated by its masculine contours. Foreground and background vie for attention, making it hard to see either form separately, yet never quite both fully at the same time. When the pieces are illuminated by soft overhead lighting, their forms are often cast against nearby walls, creating, in effect, a shadow exhibition. That can be especially intriguing when the sculptures that trace the contours of human bodies cast soft gray clouds that seem about to dissolve. Ambient daylight adds slight tints as the day goes by. Shortly after September 11, Richard Serra’s 2001 Exhibition in New York’s Gagosian Gallery—Torqued Spirals, Toruses and Spheres—rocked the art world. His huge steel plates had the effect of “shaping space” as the critic Calvin Tompkins put it, and feeding a spectrum of emotions. Thousands shared Tompkins’ “intense joy and delight”. “Never before”, he wrote, “had his sculpture played so unequivocally with the spectator’s emotions,” leaving many with “a jolt of euphoria.” Tompkins wrote the Serra show “came close to canonizing him as America’s greatest living artist.” In 2006 there was a beautifully mounted Clift sculpture exhibition in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Watching visitors enter was to be reminded that many visitors—often men lingering behind their striding wives—did not especially wish to be in an art gallery. But as they came within range of the freestanding pieces drenched in light, they became intrigued, energized. Many began to take on euphoric expressions, as though jolted by a sudden glimpse of something higher. Michael More writes about photography and art for numerous publications throughout the United States.
THREE TO THE RIGHT Mahogany Wood | 2009 | 64 x 57 x 3 cm
“Will studies relationships within his sculptures, in terms of the forms they create, the way they communicate with the viewer and interact with the space around them.� Henrietta Tsui Managing Director, Galerie Ora-Ora
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ENCLOSING FORM, TWO PIECES, HORIZONTAL Black Walnut Wood | 2008 | 25 x 66 x 5 cm
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Left NINE PIECES SUSPENDED Black Walnut Wood | 2010 | 98 x 112 x 5 cm Right THREE TWISTING VERTICALS Wenge Wood | 2009 | 154 x 60 x 5 cm
Left ENCLOSING FORM, ROUND Wenge Wood | 2010 | 64 x 76 x 5 cm Right SUSPENDED AND STANDING Padauk Wood | 2010 | 59 x 70 x 5 cm
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ENCLOSING FORM, LOW AND HORIZONTAL Black Walnut Wood | 2008 | 28 x 89 x 5 cm
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“Will Clift’s objects walk a fine line, exploring and refining the boundary between three-dimensional sculpture and two-dimensional drawing. In a delicate balancing act, their arcing arabesques evoke the contours of landscapes or human forms, yet their open-ended silhouettes, in which form and void are conjoined, avoid definitive delineation. Instead, their intersecting and tapering lines, like branches blown by the wind, animate the surrounding space and make manifest the motion that is everywhere present.” Timothy Anglin Burgard Curator of American Art, Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco
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ENCLOSING FORM, ONE ENCLOSING TWO Wenge Wood | 2010 | 33 x 84 x 5 cm Page 11 FOUR PIECES OUT AND DOWN Wenge Wood | 2009 | 18 x 126 x 5 cm
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Left RIGHT PROFILE Mahogany Wood | 2010 | 90 x 39 x 5 cm Right THREE SIMPLE CURVES Black Walnut Wood | 2009 | 140 x 64 x 4 cm
ENCLOSING FORM, THREE VERTICALS Black Walnut Wood | 2008 | 64 x 28 x 4 cm Previous Page Left THREE INTERSECTING NEAR THE CENTRE Lyptus Wood | 2009 | 99 x 71 x 3 cm Right TWO FORMS SUPPORTING EACH OTHER Black Walnut Wood | 2010 | 135 x 117 x 51 cm
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ENCLOSING FORM, REACHING OVER Wenge Wood | 2010 | 42 x 76 x 5 cm
Previous Page ENCLOSING FORM, THREE HORIZONTALS Wenge Wood | 2009 | 25 x 94 x 5 cm
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“Their remarkable poise and presence takes over a room and captures the imagination and perplexity of all those who they encounter. His simple gestural brushstrokes linger in space, challenging our physical perceptions and captivating our aesthetic imaginations.� Henrietta Tsui Managing Director, Galerie Ora-Ora
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OVER AND UNDER, SUSPENDED Wenge Wood | 2010 | 79 x 118 x 5 cm
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THREE PIECES OVER AND UNDER Wenge Wood | 2010 | 36 x 132 x 5 cm
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TWO ROUND FORMS, STACKED Lyptus Wood | 2008 | 102 x 41 x 5 cm
BIOGRAPHY Born in 1978, Will Clift has a natural talent with forms and balance, which he has been developing and expanding since childhood, when he spent much time playing with building blocks and making his first sculptures. Currently one of the most popular artists in his home town, Santa Fe, New Mexico, Clift is known for creating simple, lyrical, elegant and sophisticated sculptures that are expressive of the poignancy and the harmony between gravity and balance. His artworks are widely exhibited across the United States and in 2007 he had his debut solo show in Asia with Galerie Ora-Ora in Hong Kong. His sculptures are part of over fifty private, corporate and public collections around the world.
SOLO EXHIBITIONS
2010
2008 2007 2006 2003
“Gestures” (Galerie Ora-Ora, Hong Kong) “Points of Balance” (Gerald Peters Gallery, Santa Fe, New Mexico) “Will Clift” (Gerald Peters Gallery, Santa Fe, New Mexico) “Abstraction of Consciousness” (Galerie Ora-Ora, Hong Kong) “Will Clift” (Anne Reed Gallery, Sun Valley, Idaho) “Gesture in Balance” (Gerald Peters Gallery, Santa Fe, New Mexico) “Fourteen Sculptures” (Photoeye Gallery, Santa Fe, New Mexico)
2008 2007
SELECTED GROUP EXHIBITIONS
2010 “Artist Perspectives - Damien Hirst, Donald Sultan, Andy Warhol, and Others” (Gerald Peters Gallery, Santa Fe, New Mexico) Group Show, five sculptures (Telluride Gallery of Fine Art, Telluride, Colorado) “Turned and Sculptured Wood” (Del Mano Gallery, Los Angeles, California) “Fête” (Diehl Gallery, Jackson, Wyoming) “Obras Maestras” (OBRA Galería, San Juan, Puerto Rico) “Connecting with Contemporary Sculpture” (Univ. of Missouri, Columbia, Missouri) Winter Penthouse Show (Ralph Pucci International, New York, New York) Winter Exhibit (Gerald Peters Gallery, Santa Fe, New Mexico) Group Show (JWillott Gallery, Palm Desert, California) 2009 Group Show (Gerald Peters Gallery, New York City, New York) Group Show (Ralph Pucci International, New York City, New York) Group Show (Diehl Gallery, Jackson, Wyoming)
2006 2005 2003 2002 1999
Exhibition of Gallery Artists (Gerald Peters Gallery, Santa Fe, New Mexico) Group Show (OBRA Galería, San Juan, Puerto Rico) Group Show (Melissa Morgan Fine Art, Palm Desert, California) Exhibit for the Texas Sculpture Symposium (Gerald Peters Gallery, Dallas, Texas) Group Show (Melissa Morgan Fine Art, Palm Desert, California) “Pat Lasch and Will Clift” (Melissa Morgan Fine Art, Palm Desert, California) Group Show (Blink Gallery, Boulder, Colorado) “Silver Lining” (Gerald Peters Gallery, Santa Fe, New Mexico) Group Show (Blink Gallery, Boulder, Colorado) Hong Kong International Contemporary Art Fair (Galerie Ora-Ora, Hong Kong) “Best of Colorado Artists” (Denver International Airport, Denver, Colorado) “Ink, Clay, Wood and Steel” (Gerald Peters Gallery, Santa Fe, New Mexico) Group Show (Blink Gallery, Boulder, Colorado) Winter Contemporary Show (Gerald Peters Gallery, Santa Fe, New Mexico) Group Show (Takada Gallery, San Francisco, CA) “Baker’s Dozen” (Robert Brown Gallery, Washington, DC) “Color, Found Objects Colorado” (Denver, Colorado) Exhibition of Gallery Artists (Photoeye Gallery, Santa Fe, New Mexico) “Precious Objects” (Cantor Center for Visual Arts, Palo Alto, California) “Karl Blossfeldt and Will Clift” (Photoeye Gallery, Santa Fe, New Mexico) “EXPE - Exhibition at Stanford University” (Stanford, California)
CORPORATE AND PUBLIC COLLECTIONS McCune Foundation (Santa Fe, New Mexico) New Mexico Worker’s Comp Building (Santa Fe, New Mexico) Interleadership Partners (Hong Kong) Landmark Bank (Columbia, Missouri) Unser Discovery Center (Albuquerque, New Mexico) Four Seasons Hotel (Denver, Colorado) Central New Mexico College (Rio Rancho, New Mexico) Ritz Carlton Hotel (Miami, Florida) Fontainebleau III Hotel (Miami, Florida) Work also included in over fifty private collections around the world.
ADDITIONAL EXPERIENCE Winter 2011 Artist in Residence (Fundación Valparaiso, Andalucia, Spain) Spring 2009 Artist in Residence (Can Serrat, Barcelona, Spain) Summer 2008 Lead Instructor, Young Artists at Work (BMOCA, Boulder, Colorado) 2001 - 2002 Work in interior architecture and landscape design 1996 - 2005 Custom furniture design and construction
EDUCATION 2002 2003
Stanford University, California, B.S. Stanford University, California, M.S.
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ABOUT GALERIE ORA-ORA Galerie Ora-Ora is a research-based Asian Contemporary fine art gallery specializing in sculptures, New Ink works and the discovery of emerging talents. Privileged with exclusive representation of artists, we strive to share high quality artworks with art lovers for appreciation, investment and collection. Based in Hong Kong, we are also an international platform for local artistic talents. With Ora-Ora meaning “from one era to another” or “eternity”, we believe that good quality art survives through generations. We believe that art has no frontiers and should be experienced by anyone in the world. Art is a lifestyle. Address G/F, 7 Shin Hing Street, Central, Hong Kong Telephone 852 2851 1171 Fax 852 8147 1767 Email info@ora-ora.com Website www.ora-ora.com Editor Henrietta Tsui Graphic Designer Odetti Tse Contributor Rebecca Liu Photography Will Clift Printed Hong Kong, November 2010 ISBN 978-988-18648-5-7
All rights reserved under Ora-Ora International Limited. No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photography, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission from the publisher.