proposal for a sculpture on a traffic circle – University of Texas at El Paso
my views
The possibility to erect a sculpture near the University of Texas at El Paso, on the edge of the campus, seems to me an opportunity to enlarge its significance and implication on this area of El Paso. In this sense it can make a statement not only directed at the university, but give testimony to the region as a whole.
In the papers, which I have received, I read that there is the probability of the sculpture becoming an icon for the UTEP and surrounding community, and/or El Paso. On the page form and movement I write about the similarities between the characteristics of an icon and a those of a sculpture on a traffic circle.
my idiom and symbolic connotations
Form is for me the result of a mathematical and geometric approach; I could say 'systems', but that would be going a little too far. My art is not the rigid result of a system. A system must not dictate, but is available to be made use of. The legibility of art depends for a great deal on a common set of rules – interpreted as loosely as one can manage.
I operate in the area between the second and the third dimension. This is no twilight zone. It is all visible and can be discovered. The proposed sculpture is constructed by uniting three two-dimensional forms to create a spatial object – two identical half circle contours and a straight line, which connects the two open ends of the curves.
this
sketch shows the elementary geometric starting point for this sculpture
Taking into account that a sculpture on a location like this will most
probably invite interpretations and so become an icon in due time, I
offer my own interpretation of the work:
The two circular movements could symbolize Ciudad Juárez and El Paso,
both actually forming one metropolitan area. In this sculpture they
unite and flow together at the base, apparently forming a seamless
whole. The horizontal line which will unite the two limits at the top is
at the same time the border separating the two cities.
In my work I try not to interpret symbols into sculpture, as I want my sculpture to be pure and based on geometric truths and scientific certainties. But whenever it is possible to discover underlying symbolism, I don't discard that. On the contrary – I embrace such a thing as an extra merit. Two examples of this in my own work are the monument PRIMUM•MOVENS•ULTIMUM•MORIENS to Professor Dirk Durrer, the famous cardiologist, and my sculpture, opening the arctic circle, which name already implies the symbolic connotation.