18 december 2012

John Chamberlain


John Chamberlain in his studio on Shelter Island, New York, 2011.

Dealer Steven Kasher and John Chamberlain’s assistant Nico in Chamberlain’s studio.

Metal maquettes littering John Chamberlain’s studio.

Widelux panoramic photos lining the walls of John Chamberlain’s studio.

John Chamberlain’s metal shop studio with his orange armchair.

John Chamberlain’s new body of photoworks lining the walls of his studio.

"The 84-year-old Abstract Expressionist sculptor John Chamberlain works in a studio nestled among trees on the idyllic sands of Shelter Island, accessible only by ferry from Greenpoint or Sag Harbor in Long Island, a two-hour drive from New York....
Chamberlain’s studio is attached to his home, and it is jam-packed with artworks, some in progress and some completed, that are scattered amidst his personal things like unfinished thoughts. Among the bits of metal and tools are an abundance of random tchotchkes, including a Homer Simpson clock and an old wooden sign hung on a door, reading “Laundry Room: drop your pants here.” An exercise bike is buried under piles of folded shirts; old film reels are stacked next to a snapshot of his daughter-in-law doing ballet.

Aluminum maquettes -- crinkled twists of colored foil that had never left his studio until 2006, when some of them were used as models for large-scale sculptures -- sit in rows along a window sill, shimmering in the sun. Sculptures, including two early works in hammered iron that recall Alexander Calder mobiles and were apparently made when Chamberlain was a hairdresser, cover tabletops and the floor. Standing out in the visual cacophony is the creamy, skin-hued Miss Lucy Pink (1963), his earliest car-part sculpture.

The walls are covered with glossy photos that he has taken over the years with a Widelux panoramic camera, startling images that manage to capture and recreate (in color) his crumpled-metal esthetic. We see fish-eye distortions of his own features, abrupt changes in scale and depth, mirror reflections in windows, and the beaming face of Prudence, his copper-haired wife, whom he met when she was working as Dan Flavin’s assistant many years ago. Abstract and representational at once, they even document a personal calamity: one pictures Chamberlain wild-eyed against the night, a bundle of striped fabric perched on his head and streaks of red coursing down his cheeks. “When he lived in Florida, he was robbed -- and the first thing he did, before calling the police, was to take a picture of his bloody face,” Nico explains. “The man’s committed.”

He leads us from the studio through the kitchen and den, where Chamberlain spends most of his time when he is at home, and into the recently constructed section of the house, which now connects the living space and photo studio with the gargantuan barn that is his metal shop. Its 40-foot ceilings harbor mountains of car parts arranged by color or size, some stuffed in gigantic shopping carts, some littering the floor, along with welders, car-crushing machines, saws, drills. The sculptures, larger and taller than any I have seen, reach almost to the roof. They are glorious turrets of unfinished metals, lacquered metals and varnished metals, mangled hoods folded back on themselves and affixed to a trunk or a bumper. Nico points to a round, orange armchair, tattered and torn, sitting among the sharp rubble: Chamberlain’s throne, from which he orchestrates construction. Step back and the scene comes together like a landscape under the sea, knotted corals of every variety twisting and stretching towards the sun." (bron: artnet, tekst: Emily Nathan)

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