The Alexander Calder sculpture, Peau Rouge, was constructed in front of the Musical Arts Center in 1970. It is an immediately recognizable work that has appeared in university publications, promotional photographs, and films in the years since it was installed. This fall, the Calder has been obscured by a plastic scaffolding structure as it has undergone an extensive restoration process.
When I visited the sculpture, it was painted with a corrosion-resistant grey paint, and towered in its plastic structure. The air inside was warm, and the wind whipped the plastic from without. A bright sun cast strong shadows of the scaffolding. Underfoot was the shiny black blast medium, coal slag, flecked with bits of the old red paint.
I became interested with the space around the Calder, produced by the sculpture as its own site of labor. The number of people needed to carry out a project of this scale; the temporary scaffolding structure erected around the Calder; the glittering coal slag covering the ground, evidence of weeks of work removing the paint. I became interested in the space inside the scaffolding as a liminal dream-space where a secret version of the Calder existed, stripped of its iconic red-orange matte paint, only emerging backlit through the plastic from the outside after the sun se, but otherwise concealed. Inside the structure, the Calder was not the Calder, but a temporary work, a completed sculpture reverted to a work-in-progress, a thing dissimilar from its photograph. I felt that I was witnessing a singularly unique state of this sculpture that is immortalized in so many photographs. Inside the structure, work was contained, and an alternate temporality was created.
The Calder is a vortex, a nexus of influence, interaction, activity, from which the entire history of everything could be teased out. All objects contain everything. It’s not simplistic to say this. Out from the Calder bursts materials, labor, capital, contracts, waste, and power. With this work I wanted to respond to some of the things generated in the Calder’s field. I photographed the scaffolding from inside the structure and collected coal slag blasting medium from the ground, dotted with flecks of old Calder red. I then recreated the scaffolding in different mediums.