Sculptural Interventions: Posing Questions Outside the Gallery
Guest Post by Eugenia Williams House Director Megan Robertson
Edra Soto. Graft|Knoxville. 2022. All photographs of Graft courtesy of Bruce Cole Photography.
In addition to presenting exhibitions in the Candoro Marble Building in Knoxville, Tri-Star Arts and its partner organizations have brought compelling installations outside the gallery walls. Two recent commissions pose questions about the relationship between the built and natural world and invite viewers to consider how these objects can reframe their own points of view.
The site-specific sculpture Root (2023), by local artist Jason Brown, provides a rough-hewn contrast to its setting on the grounds of the pristine art deco Candoro Marble Building. Using materials extracted from industrial and natural settings, Root creates a clever dialogue with the abandoned manufacturing facilities and the refined building nearby. The sculpture features a tree branch, sourced in a South Knoxville forest, embedded in a block of rough marble extracted from a nearby quarry. A ribbon of steel, seemingly compressed by the block of marble, was salvaged from a scrap yard in Lonsdale, TN. Root reveals its raw materials in seemingly unfinished forms that belie the artist's careful composition and attention to detail.
Jason Brown. Root. 2023. Photo: Megan Robertson.
Brown describes his motivations, "My sculptures are situated in urban and rural landscapes in order to question human relationships with the natural world. I am particularly interested in exploring transitional spaces where growth and destruction are happening simultaneously. Urban examples might include abandoned industrial spaces such as factories that are no longer operational but have historical relevance to contemporary culture and future post-industrial purpose." (Brown, Jason - School of Art. https://art.utk.edu/people/instructional-faculty/brown-jason/)
Root was commissioned by Tri-Star Arts. It will remain on view through December 31, 2024. To learn more about Jason Brown and this project, see here.
Though it is also made of steel and marble, Chicago-based artist Edra Soto’s Graft|Knoxville (2022) utilizes an entirely different formal language to engage with its environment. Soto selected the site with Tri-Star Arts on the grounds of the University of Tennessee/GATOP Arboretum & Education Center (UTGA&EC) at the invitation of Dr. Alan Solomon. Soto's Graft series utilizes the aesthetic of rejas screens from her native Puerto Rico to transform spaces. Rejas are essential to vernacular architecture and visual culture in Puerto Rico. These ornate ironwork screens became ubiquitous on the island following World War II, but the form originates in Spanish colonial architecture. The screens offer protection and allow light and air to penetrate porches, courtyards, and dwellings. In Soto's work, the ornate forms are rendered with crisp geometry to create clean-lined yet decorative structures. Adding polished marble bench seats fabricated from salvaged marble from Morrow Quarry adds a direct local connection to the installation. Graft|Knoxville, like so many of Soto's works, is a useable sculpture, enhancing and overlaying the view of rolling hills from UTGA&EC with shifting patterns of light and shadow.
Like Brown's Root at Candoro Marble Building, Graft|Knoxville interrogates and enhances its setting through its materials and form. It combines the local with an outsider's perspective, raising questions about architecture's ability to inspire dialogues about colonialism, beauty, and industry.
Graft|Knoxville represents the culmination of over two years of a collaborative effort by the artist, Tri-Star Arts, the University of Tennessee, and frequent Aslan Foundation collaborators, Sanders Pace Architects. To learn more about its creation and the many organizations involved, visit Tri-Star Arts. For additional information about Edra Soto and the Graft series, see here.