Thomas Houseago

Yet to be titled (peeking figure), 2012

Tuf-Cal, hemp, iron rebar, and wood
110 x 46 x 44 in. (279.4 x 116.8 x 111.8 cm)

Nancy A. Nasher and David J. Haemisegger Collection, Promised gift to the Nasher Sculpture Center

Thomas Houseago creates powerfully evocative sculptures constructed of separate, hollow parts that are, at turns, imposing and vulnerable, menacing and sympathetic. Yet to be titled (peeking figure) towers over the viewer yet strikes a playful pose, coyly peering out from underneath its massive arm wrapped over its head. The initial perception of the work’s mass is disrupted by the discovery of a skeleton of iron bars and wood supports in its exposed central cavity.

Houseago frequently works in Tuf-Cal—a brand of polymer-infused plaster that is especially strong and durable—and uses the material in a variety of traditional and non-traditional ways. Here, Houseago draped plaster-soaked hemp over clay forms he sculpted directly on the floor. The plaster and hemp cast is then lifted vertically and reinforced with rebar and wood. The gestural surface modeling retains the gouges and finger marks of its making and recalls the work of modernist predecessors such as Auguste Rodin and Willem de Kooning.

Exhibition:

July 23 - October 9, 2016

For millennia, plaster has attracted artists through its remarkable versatility. Derived from ground or powdered limestone mixed with water, plaster was used by the ancient Egyptians, Greeks, and Romans, although it was associated with architecture and painting as much as with sculpture. Poured into molds, it can replicate three-dimensional objects. As a material worked directly, it lends itself to both additive and subtractive approaches: artists can add more plaster to a sculpture to model it further, but they can also cut it apart or carve into it, as if it were stone.