Sculpture is optimally a metaphorical projection of bodily presence in alien material, a kind of phantasy introspection of the latently human in the manifestly inhuman.
Donald Kuspit 1
One's relation to nature, or Nature, is complex. If nature is regarded as being what is, coextensive with beings or Being, one is within nature. Yet nature, or Nature, regarded as things having their being without human agency, is as a notion a cultural construct which nevertheless references what is not culture, if culture is regarded as that which has being by virtue of human agency. The terms nature and culture are equiprimordial and coimplicative, forming an oppositional pair.
In these works by Phillip Shore, nature and culture, for all of their position as oppositional terms, merge in seamless transitions of form and material. In Visible Evidence, the modules vary only in slight gestural variations. This subtle difference of form from one module to the others is sufficient to reflexively signify the title of the work in American Sign Language.
Limbs of trees function as human limbs, culminating in hands and thumbs. Retaining its materiality, the sculptural object, in its verticality and in its manifestation of exteriority and interiority, evokes the lived experience of embodied consciousness. The form of the works manifests this embodiedness, not only in the overt representation of parts of bodies-hands, thumbs, heads-but in the structure of the works. Verticality as such evokes the standing body, with the eminence of the head at the top, as in Life Cycle and Roots, and with a metaphorical torso below. Frequently, the 'head' or 'torso' is house-like in form, with doors which close and open, as a reliquary might close and open, to conceal and to disconceal what is enclosed. To conceal and disconceal is to protect, both physically and metaphorically, and to reveal, to manifest as a revelation. What is enclosed within is a small natural object-an acorn, insect wings or exo-skeleton-seemingly commonplace, ephemeral objects of the natural world, repositioned to function as a synecdoche for nature as a whole.
To enframe these objects within a piece of sculpture, at once entailing their preservation and their presentation, is shift them from the natural world where their diminutive size and quotidian character makes them readily overlooked, to the domain of culture, where they are invested with meaning and made an object of attention. This shifting from natural to cultural is a shifting from mere things to signifiers, a cultural act that confers meaning.
Phillip Shore is Professor of Sculpture at the University of Dallas. He received the Master of Fine Arts from the University of Notre Dame, and the Bachelor of Fine Arts from Alfred University. Shore's recent exhibitions include: Reliquaries and Ritual Objects, Craighead-Green Gallery, Dallas, Texas; New Faculty; Nancy Rabel & Phillip Shore, Upper Gallery, University of Dallas, Irving, Texas; Grove, Snite Museum of Art Notre Dame, Indiana (MFA Exhibition); Shore/Lambert, Lakeside Gallery, Lakeside, Michigan; A Working Journal, Krasl Art Center, St. Joseph, Michigan; Jvuri Revisited, Neometix Gallery, New Orleans, Louisiana.