Sculpture – Archive
Origins
To see is not the same as to look. As Joseph Kosuth noted ” Seeing is not as simple as looking”, the one being observation the other being investigation.
Occasionally you may look at an object and it may trigger a fleeting recognition, a glimpse of something familiar. This is sometimes called pareidolia (seeing faces in rock formations, clouds, or breakfast cereal), or apophenia (interpreting patterns in meaningless data or objects). The objects that you see, especially if they are in rock, are known as mimitoliths.
You may lose that glimpsed recognition almost immediately, and understand that thing for what it is, a pebble on the beach, a shadow in the gloom, a shifting pattern of clouds.
But what happens when you try to isolate what it was that caught your attention in the first place?To do this you need to look, and to build an understanding of what it is you are seeing.
This series of sculptures try and challenge that understanding by being both ambiguous in appearance and in material. They are often light when they look heavy, dense when they are friable, and yet they seem familiar, though unlikely. They look ‘vaguely recognisable’.
In the same way that a face in the clouds creates a story, I want these pieces to inspire curiosity and story telling by challenging perceptions of what you see.
Process
Simon Clements is a sculptor and printmaker working from his rural Oxfordshire studio. After working for many years with clay and wood he now sculpts predominantly with polystyrene, a material that allows him to realise sculptural projects quickly and efficiently.
Working with expanded foam using simple knives and abrasive paper, Simon creates ambiguous forms that are inspired by nature. He seeks to make sculpture that creates a dialogue with the viewer, posing questions about how we recognise what we know and how we learn to recognise the material it is made from.
Recent work has continued to explore the chameleon properties of polystyrene, playing with perceptions of how things appear and feel by using the theatrical potential of patinated surfaces. Sculptural works sometimes include found objects, natural and man made. These contrasting materials and their textures add to the “character” of the piece, and often give unexpected weight to a lightweight material.
“Art is born of the observation and investigation of nature” (Cicero).
