Sculpture takes such a weird place in art museums worldwide. It’s always in the way, it’s always bulky, and to find out its provenance you have to track down the exact, faraway space on the wall where the plaque is. Unless there’s a small fence around the work, and the plaque is attached to it. It’s really easy to miss the sculpture. But when sculpture is great, it’s able to overshadow any two-dimensional work of art. Think Laocoön. Is there anything greater than Laocoön? Will you ever pass by the Beuys felt and remain unchanged? Staring at paintings is one sort of cultural experience, but when the presence invades your space, when it’s on your level, at your proportions, there is something refreshing that transcends the border between art and life.
Christian Lemmerz, a German sculpture who lives and works in Denmark, takes this further by enhancing his classically-perfect pieces with recursion, repetition, and ripples of the modern world. He molds desire, rotting flesh, wounds, wrinkles, even tattoos out of stone and bronze. He makes sarcophagi sculpture of queer and multiple partnered couples. A true master of the form, he is the great classicist we need for our technoarmageddon.
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