Category: Aluminum

TITLE: Torso Fragment
ARTIST: Casey Eskridge
DATE: 2005
MATERIALS: Aluminum
DIMENSIONS: 3′ 2″ x 1′ 8″ x 1′ 6″
TYPE: sculpture

Torso Fragment (2005) is a contemporary take on the contrapposto form, an asymmetrical representation of the human figure that results when weight rests primarily on one leg.

Try it yourself. Put most of your weight on your right leg and notice how it shifts your shoulders and hips. Now, try it with your left leg. Artists often use contrapposto to capture dynamism and nuance in the human form.

While contrapposto can be found in art around the world, it became central to the European sculptural and pictorial repertoire during the Renaissance-perhaps most famously embodied in Michelango’s David (1504). This is the tradition from which Herron alum Casey Eskridge draws.

Eskridge’s figure evokes the fragments of ancient Greek and Roman sculpture that so inspired Renaissance artists. But, looking to the contemporary world, he casts his torso in aluminum—that material so essential to modernity—the fabric of airplanes, automobiles, skyscrapers, and computers

To learn more about this artwork, visit https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Torso_Fragment,  which includes information created by Herron School of Art and Design and IUPUI Museum Studies faculty and students in 2009 as part of “A Survey of IUPUI Public Art.”

TITLE: The Herron Arch 1
ARTIST: James Wille Faust
DATE: 2005
MATERIALS: painted aluminum
DIMENSIONS: 20′ x 7′ x 7′
TYPE: sculpture

The Herron Arch 1 (2005) was the first large-scale sculpture created by James Wille Faust, renowned alumnus of the Herron School of Art and Design.

Composed of over thirty geometrically-shaped pieces of painted aluminum, the work sits at the intersection of sculpture and painting. “Unconcerned about what classification my work fits into, I am free to explore with no limitations and in any direction, style or medium,” states Faust, whose airbrush work has received acclaim.

A lovely conceit of this piece comes from moving around it. From its front or back, it appears black and white. But, as you move around it, you are greeted with a lovely array of prime colors—a reminder that things can surprise you if you give them time and approach them from different angles.

Designed and painted by Faust, the 20 foot tall arch was fabricated by Indianapolis-based Tarpening-Lafollette Company.

To learn more about this artwork, visit https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Herron_Arch_1, which includes information created by Herron School of Art and Design and IUPUI Museum Studies faculty and students in 2009 as part of “A Survey of IUPUI Public Art.”

TITLE: Mega-Gem
ARTIST: John Francis Torreano
DATE: 1989
MATERIALS: Welded aluminum
DIMENSIONS: 7′ x 11′ x 7′
TYPE: sculpture

Mega-Gem (1989) has a long history in Indianapolis. Owned by Newfields, but lent to IUPUI, this oversized gemstone featuring three dozen colored metal rosettes, was part of a series completed by John Francis Torreano that played with the idea of the preciousness of art. How do you feel in its presence?

As with precious stones, there is always the question of the value of art. What does playing with scale and composition, as Torreano has done here, achieve with regards to how we think about precious things?

If gems often appear as pure, sparkling adornments that signal wealth and status, is Mega-Gem a kind of jewelry for the body of the campus? And is it meant to do similar work? Torreano (born 1941) is an American artist from Michigan, a clinical professor of studio art at New York University in Abu Dhabi.

Torreano has observed that all art “exists somewhere between a totally abstract creation and a total reproduction of physical things in the world.” In this regard, he describes his own work as “real fake art.”

To learn more about this artwork, visit https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mega-Gem, which includes information created by Herron School of Art and Design and IUPUI Museum Studies faculty and students in 2009 as part of “A Survey of IUPUI Public Art.”