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SO FINE! If people see things and see art through their machine, why have the statue there in the first place. Take away Magritte’s The Future of Statue, now my statue does not have to exist in the physical world because it already exist in the virtual. Here is an empty plinth, like Magritte’s Empty Picture Frame. On each side, there are different codes that links to three of the same statue that Magritte made.

Exhibited in London April 2013

Exhibited in London April 2013

Magritte casted five statues from Napoleon’s death mask. Four of which are still in existence. One belongs to the Tate, one in Lehmbruck, and one in New York. The fourth is probably in a private collection.

By Magritte titling these masks The Future of Statues, the embodiment of Napoleon has transcended from a tangible memorial piece of a dead emperor to a metaphysical being. In this The Future of Statue, the sculpture transcends from the physical to the virtual world. 

Here in the “Age of Mechanical Reproduction”, we face an inverted Allegory of the Cave. Originally, Plato describes an enlightened person coming out of the cave and seeing the object in reality, rather than a 2D shadow on a surface. Walk around it, smell it, and feel it. Ironically, after the advancement of technology we return to a 2D surface, but we have the capability of defying time and space by being in three cities at once: New York, Duisburg, andLiverpool.

Jean Baudrillard in 1929 wrote about the aura of the original, and the lack of authenticity with the fake, but what if the there is no physical object, only something in the virtual. Can the aura exist without the physical? My Future of Statue, there is no tangible object, yet there is an feeling that cannot be replaced on any giving space. It had to be in a gallery space in order for the piece to deconstructing what a sculpture should be and what a plinth should do in a gallery space. So I question my viewers, can quality of relationship be developed online? Can technology help connect you with more people? If so, what are the depths of those connections?

Now this is not a rebellion of technology. I am not a Willam Morrison. In fact I am all for using technology and all it has to offer. I do however believe that we must be aware to compensate for where it lacks.

Sold By Christie's Rockafeller Plaza, New York

Sold By Christie’s
Rockafeller Plaza, New York

 

Wilhelm Lehmbruck-Museum Duisburg, Germany

Wilhelm Lehmbruck-Museum
Duisburg, Germany

Tate Liverpool, UK

Tate
Liverpool, UK

Go back to the first or to:

The Treachery of Images

The Lovers

The Future of Statues