Futur Skulptur

© Glenn Harper

(Catalogue essay for the "Futur Skulpture" exhibition, juried by Glenn Harper for the McLean Project for the Arts in 2001)

When I was first asked to jury "Futur Skulpture," the image conjured up in my mind by the title was of a gallery filled with flickering monitors displaying virtual sculpture. But these 14 artists, chosen from 108 submisions, had a quite different notion: they fulfilled the polyglot premise of the title in a pluralism of ideas and materials: watercolor and oil paint are used as sculptural materials, as are coins, velveteen, wax, salt, concrete, and grocery bags—plus video, computer animation, and hypertext. These materials are not new in sculpture—many can be traced back to Post-Minimalism, and even digital and video art are hardly new entries in the "expanded field" of sculpture. But it is in the exuberant multiplicity of the works, in the attraction of sculptors to a wide variety of materials (and in particular to ephemeral and non-monumental materials), that the future can be seen.

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