ROBERT G. SIMON

Artist’s Statement

 

   Figure sculpture offers a three-dimensional illusion of a three-dimensional reality, i.e., the human body in nature. In comparison with painting and other two-dimensional media, sculpture’s intrinsic capacity to occupy space in the same manner as the thing it represents affords the work a more comprehensive equivalence to its referent. However, this defining feature of the medium also constitutes an artistic liability, in that it can draw our attention to what a sculpted figure still lacks, which is movement and life. When the ancient religious function of statuary no longer pertains, what does it take to animate the sculptural object in the mind's eye, as if it embodies a spirit after all? An animate being is all motion and flux—even a professional model can’t hold perfectly still under the artist’s sustained scrutiny and thus presents differently from moment to moment. For millennia it has been possible to replicate the human form by means of molds, and in more recent times via photography and digital scanning; regardless, all of those technologies freeze the subject at the moment of contact. On the other hand, a live presence constitutes a moving target, as do the fleeting images of pure imagination; therein lies the sculptor’s challenge and opportunity, still.