DALLAS, Texas (June 21, 2021)—The Nasher Sculpture Center announces the next exhibition for Nasher Public in the Nasher Store gallery, Cameron Schoepp’s Twist, on view from June 24 – July 18, 2021.
For the past two decades, Cameron Schoepp has made work that compels viewers to reconsider the familiar. Whether sculptural forms drawn from everyday life, like hats, benches, or rugs, Schoepp’s treatment raises them from their utilitarian reference points to objects of esthetic and philosophical consideration. He often combines and arranges these so that they create spaces of their own, a new kind of space that obliges one to consider it, and one’s own presence, on different terms.
For Nasher Public, Schoepp has created Twist, a loop of industrial chain suspended from the ceiling on a motor. The motor turns the chain, at first very slowly, incrementally increasing in speed, and slowing again to a stop, in the span of a twelve-minute cycle, which begins again after a brief rest. At rest, the chain reads as a line. The line becomes a loop that broadens as it picks up speed, drawing a three-dimensional volume in space. When the motor stops, the chain gently twists and untwists upon itself, until it comes to rest and the cycle starts again. The subtle beauty in the shifting form of the swinging chain belies its inherent danger to the viewer, which the artist both highlights and ameliorates with the metal stanchion on the floor. The stanchion gives the chain a safe perimeter in which to turn, but it is on wheels, suggesting that the protection it provides the viewer can change, too. Twist grew out of the pandemic and underlines a number of its effects: the sense of threat it engendered; the abrupt and constant shifts it brought to the foundations of our lives, upturning one’s sense of stability and safety; and the way it forced one to slow down, which often resulted in taking note of the simple beauties around us.
In its simple elaboration of a line into a volume, Schoepp’s Nasher Public installation recalls Naum Gabo’s Kinetic Construction (Standing Wave) from 1919–20, a small, motorized sculpture that spins a thin steel rod to create an optical impression of a volumetric form. The wheeled stanchion brings new meaning to the potential for motion in David Smith’s welded steel sculptures on wheels, as well as Rachel Harrison’s works which incorporate museum barriers and stanchions as a way of interrogating their protective qualities. Schoepp’s installation, however, puts these devices to new and innovative use, subtly and elegantly pointing to the ephemeral and transitory nature of the world in which we live.
About Cameron Schoepp
Cam Schoepp has been one of the leading artistic figures in North Texas for over three decades. He earned his BFA in sculpture and ceramics from Pacific Lutheran University in Tacoma, WA, and his MFA in sculpture from Texas Christian University in Fort Worth, where he has taught since 2003. Schoepp’s work has been featured in numerous solo and group exhibitions throughout Texas, as well as in Chicago, New York, and Hiroshima, Japan. He has received numerous commissions, grants, honors, and awards, and his work is represented in museum and private collections in Texas, San Francisco, and New York. Schoepp’s collaborations with architects Mark and Peter Anderson of Anderson and Anderson Architects in San Francisco have resulted in innovative projects that expand the boundaries of both sculpture and architecture.
About Nasher Public
Nasher Public is an ongoing, two-pronged public art initiative which aims to generate access to public art by North Texas artists at the Nasher and throughout the greater Dallas community. The project will launch first at the Nasher in a newly formed gallery, presenting monthly exhibitions over the next year, followed by an ongoing series of off-site exhibitions in partnership with area businesses. The new gallery, formerly occupied by the Nasher Store, fronts Flora Street and is directly accessible from the Nasher’s entrance foyer. For the duration of the project, the space will be open to the public free of charge during the museum’s public hours, and viewable through the windows during off hours.