Mark Andreas
Coining the term “reactive sculpture” to refer to his work, artist Mark Andreas has spent the past twelve years designing, crafting, and constructing sculptural “machines” whose power lay not in the fact that they move explosively when provided with a natural catalyst, but that, even when static and disengaged, they possess or embody the potential for action that leads to a subsequent altered state. This altering of state is in a sense a form of “self-destruction”. Yet in opposition to destruction lay growth, a sequence also found in the natural world.
Created on a human-scale and imbued with the grace found in the articulation of the human body, Andreas’ works incorporate both raw, uncontrolled instinctual power and the aesthetic beauty of a balanced and controlled cognitive equilibrium. While these sculptural machines do not think or reason on their own, at the heart of their design is a dynamic mechanism which can be released by an internal reaction to an external stimulus, much in the manner that a human body can be propelled into action when exposed to natural forces that trigger instinctual drives and physical reactions. The processes of decay, altered temperature, depletion of energy sources, the very same stimuli that power our own behaviors, also power Andreas’ work. Reference and analogy to the condition of being ‘human’, both at an individual and at a global level, are richly evoked. This evocative element of the work further references our species centuries old invocation to religion, philosophy, and science in an effort to understand, predict, and even gain power over natural force and process.
Of Andreas’ major influences is the sculptor David Smith (1906-1965) whose work is problematic to classify but who is credited with initiating “a new era in American sculpture” during the 1950’s and 60’s. There are a number of parallels between Smith and Andreas. Both studied art at major institutions yet neither achieved a typical degree. Smith learned much of his craft, process, and knowledge of materials while working in an automobile plant over summers while in college and as a welder in defense work during World War II; Andreas worked in boat yards in Germany as a teenager and Connecticut as an adult, gaining experience in materials (wood, metal, and fiberglass) and skills in handling these materials while repairing and building marine vessels.
Andreas also learned to forge and fabricate hot metal from his grandfather and from other craftsmen with whom he worked as an employee / apprentice. David Smith worked with Le Roy Bolton, a blacksmith who helped him power forge a series of sculptures exhibited in 1956 of whom he said, “Bolton’s interest in my work was more than the subcontracting of machine and man…we became friends, talking of metal…”
Of his experience Smith is quoted as saying “The equipment I use, my supply of material, comes from factory work, and duplicates as nearly as possible the production equipment used in making a locomotive. What associations the (materials of the work) possess are those of this century: power, structure, movement, progress, suspension, destruction, brutality”. Andreas’ work similarly presents a dichotomy between beauty and destruction as magnificently explosive, even dangerous, power is emitted by his work both in an immobile state and when released into movement. For Andreas “Life is a palette”.
Like Smith, Andreas’ work also tends to be on a human scale. At times Andreas makes clear references to the human body as in the muscular, tendon-like metal delineation of the limbs of Seed Spreader (2002-2005) and the Brancusi-esque machined femininity of Conservation of Momentum (2006-2007). Ancient carved figures from the Cycladic Islands, the so-called “Cycladic Idols”, the timeless grace of a dancer’s arms in pose, or the bend of a bow about to release an arrow are all associatively referenced in Andreas’ work “Hanging in Balance” (2005-2006).
Andreas also notes a deep debt to mentor and instructor Andrew McMillan (SAI, Boston) in whose sculpture class students spent two out of three hours drawing from the human figure before being allowed to model it from clay. Likewise, Elliot Elisofon’s 1938 photograph of David Smith’s studio documents drawings and traditional sculpture of the female form as, despite the abstract qualities of his work, Smith is said to have never conceptually abandoned figuration and figurative references.
Andreas’ major works of his career to this point are for the first time featured together in the spaces of the UTC Cress Gallery. Each is accompanied by a video, produced by Andreas with Andrei Zakow, which documents the work as it is triggered into the movement of its potential. Seed Spreader 2002-2005 finds its raison d’etre when its mechanism is wound and a small twig is placed in the interior of its body; the twig deteriorates slowly and unpredictably under the pressure of 400 pounds of hand forged and assembled steel, to the point at which the twig breaks and the mechanism is released in an explosion of violent movement, also unpredictable in its extent and duration, culminating in a spinning release of grass seed, an effort to find the meaning of an uncontrollable response through the act of progenization. Hanging in Balance (2006) is comprised of wooden arcs, beautifully finished to the element-resisting hard polish of a ship’s mast, deck, and hull, counter-balanced to mimic a movement of dance or the energy of wind in a ship’s sail. Ice placed within its triggering mechanism slowly changes temperature, returning to a liquid state to release the work’s graceful fall into destruction. Conservation of Momentum (2006-2007) whose machine-like finish denies its method of hand construction, boldly bares its sensuous and seductive curvi-linear form that eerily seems to mock the viewer as it dares it cannot be touched. A flame burning from the work consumes its own fuel to the point of a sudden, spinning release of a cloak of cloth that envelopes and silences the form and its previous dialogue within a shroud of mystery and silence.
Essential to the strengths of Andreas’ work is that its consideration does not end with its viewing as an object of beauty, nor with being set into its potential motion, but that it struggles with themes about biological and physical nature, life and self, and frankly, art and history, as well as the historical relevance of these concepts themselves. Andreas’ “reactive sculptures” directly reflect his commitment to process and craft and the engagement and expansion of his use of materials, and to a grappling to discover, through cognitive design and intuition, the delicate balance between machine mechanism, aesthetic form, and philosophical question of a simultaneously ontological and epistemological category. The anthropomorphic relation of the work is as difficult to deny as its machine-like quality (as the human body is a ‘machine”) and its susceptibility to selected yet unpredictable natural forces. The work itself describes the boundaries of a conceptual arena in which the viewer can envision being both played and player, created and creator , controlled at once by fate as well as self-determination.
r. grover 07.22.07.
Quotated references: The Oxford Dictionary of Art Chilvers, Osbourne and Farr, Oxford Press
Mark Andreas studied at the School of the Art Institute, Boston, Massachusetts (1995-1997) and the School of the Visual Arts, New York City (1997-1998). As a teenager he spent summers working at his uncle’s boat yard in Germany and following college Andreas worked at various boat yards on the coast of Connecticut, constructing and repairing marine vessels. He continues to work independently as a carpenter and as a custom cabinetry, furniture, and metal fabricator. Exhibitions include “Singularity in the Communal Tide” curator Rupert Ravens, Pierro Gallery of South Orange, NJ (2007); “Flamingo South Beach Sculpture Garden”, Scope Miami, South Beach, FL (2006); “Back to Nature” Contemporary Arts Center, North Adams, MA (2006); “Newark Between Us” Stamford, CT (2006); “Seed Spreader” DamStuhltrager Gallery, Brooklyn, NY (2005); “Boy’s Life” northeast traveling exhibition (2005); “Between Fear and Freedom” Artspace, New Haven, CT (2004); “Art of the Northeast” Silvermine Galleries, New Haven, CT (2002). Awards include a SCOPE / Miami Emerging Artists Grant (2006) and a Mollie and Albert Jacobsen Memorial Award for Sculpture (2002). Andreas currently maintains a studio in the city of Stamford, CT, where he lives with wife Kate, a lawyer, and Buddy, the family dog. His work is represented by DamStuhltrager Gallery, Brooklyn, NY.
Reactive Sculpture
