SculptureX 2018 @ Hyperallergic
TOLEDO, Ohio — I missed both the keynote for Sculpture X 2018, presented by artist Mel Chin on September 28, and the September 29 symposium keynote by Laurie Jo Reynolds, a policy advocate and artist who seems to be the ideal representative for this year’s festival, themed “Igniting Change.” This year’s offerings are exhibitions heavy on interactive works, audience intervention, and social practice art, but also, perhaps unsurprisingly, a little light on sculpture.
At Toledo Museum of Art, for example, a large installation work, called “TWO ME,” by Chin, is positioned on the front terrace of the TMA campus. This interactive work was originally commissioned for the courtyard in front of Philadelphia’s City Hall in 2017, and is comprised of two white scaffold-like ramps that lead participants to two terminal points glassed in at roughly waist height on four sides. What can only be seen by facing the installation head-on is that these terminuses are actually high stone pedestals, each labeled “ME” — essentially placing whoever has walked up there in the position of ancient marble statuary. The participants finish the art, and by having two pedestals, they may also create intentional or inadvertent tableaux with someone who has chosen to mount the adjoining pedestal.
Read more here…
An Ohio Sculpture Festival that Is Curiously Light on Sculpture