LINCOLN, MASS.- DeCordova Sculpture Park and Museum presents PLATFORM 12: Aaron Stephan, the twelfth project in the PLATFORM series, in which the Maine-based artist recreates iconic twentieth-century sculptures in the vernacular of deCordova’s buildings and grounds. Opening on July 10, 2013, and remaining on view through October 2013, Stephan’s Secondhand Utopias are located on the Rappaport Rooftop Terrace, on the Sculpture Park Terrace, and in the Sculpture Park. Stephan employs everyday forms including railings and trash barrels to recontextualize modern sculptural masterpieces by artists such as Vladimir Tatlin, Donald Judd, and Robert Smithson.
Stephan notes: “I focus on the use of sculpture as an idealized or utopian space that is expressed through form. I have appropriated a group of iconic twentieth-century sculptures and contextualized them in the site. It could be said that the alleged autonomy of the borrowed form is corrupted by the reality of an everyday context. These works explore the possibility of utopian form that stands within its environment rather than outside of it.”
Stephan’s three-part installation includes:
Monument on a Museum, located on the Rappaport Rooftop Terrace This sculpture is based on Tatlin’s Tower. Though Tatlin’s architectural form was never built, it represented the ideals of the common man within a modern world–a concept that resonated with artists throughout much of the twentieth century. At deCordova, Stephan constructed a version of Tatlin’s Tower on the upper roof deck of the Museum. The work has been constructed from the same materials as the Museum’s pre-existing railing and appears to grow out of the building itself.
Untitled (16 Garbage Cans), located on the Sculpture Park Terrace This installation is inspired by the work of Donald Judd, whose sculptures often repeat a series of minimal forms to explore the potential beauty of the mass produced object and the physicality of abstraction. Stephan applied the same working process to the Museum’s silver, cuboid garbage cans found on the back patio. He lays out 16 of these recreated cans in a grid formation, placed far enough apart so that viewers can walk between them. Like a typical Judd installation, these sculptures point to the more subtle aspects of their environment.
Spilled Paint, located in the Sculpture Park Sited on one of the hills leading up to the back patio, this installation is inspired by Robert Smithson’s Glue Pour and Asphalt Rundown. Both works illustrate how everyday actions can have artistic consequences; Spilled Paint aims to do the same. Stephan poured four 5-gallon buckets of paint (the same Atrium White color used to cover the Museum gallery walls) down the hill. Formally, the work is similar to an Abstract Expressionist painting on the hillside. Its narrative defies the intended purpose of Smithson’s work–that of entropy–as well as the emotional and expressive content associated with Abstract Expressionism.
Born in Springville, New York, in 1974, Aaron Stephan lives and works in Portland, Maine. He received his B.F.A. in sculpture from SUNY Purchase College in 1996, and his M.F.A. from Maine College of Art, Portland, Maine, in 2002. His work has been shown in the Portland Museum of Art, The Institute of Contemporary Art Portland, and The Center for Maine Contemporary Art, and he recently contributed to the Percent for Art Projects in Biddeford, Maine.
