The Power of Re-Imagination

The 

 Name: "Mexico"
Artist: Byron Galvez
Year: 1989
Medium: Bronze

 I found this piece when researching Mexican sculptures, and I found this one to be very strange, oddly intriguing and unsettling. Overall, I didn't like it. Which is exactly why I chose to do a recreation of it in the way I wish it would have been done by restoring order with imagination.

   Subjective Critique: 

At first glance, you see a sculpture that is very confusing and messy. It is made up of a woman's body parts that are roughly organized into the shape of a woman, though it looks to me like a woman who is falling apart. It's hard to discern the placement of her hips. Her left arm begins high above where her shoulder should be, and it is barely attached. The right arm is completely detached and is standing up on the right hand. There is decent shape; everything is very rounded and curved, but nothing is proportional. It is lacking good form, in my personal opinion.
There is no color apart from the natural bronze color, which tells me he was more concerned than the subject than the aesthetics. In my composition, I would like to add color to it to enhance both the look and the mood.
The line work creates good unity and there is very interesting negative space. I do like that he added texture to it by putting what looks like scratches all over it. The scratches make it look much more interesting than it would be if it was just smooth, though for how I envision it being I want to make it smooth. Though it is okay for what it is, overall I don't like it. It is very crude and uncomfortable to look at. With the ability to change it, I would first make it look much more natural. The body would be more proportional, the form more discernible, the texture more human and less scratched up and messy. The face would be more filled with emotion and expression and the subject matter would be more clear to the audience. It seems to me like a woman who has been cut up in pieces and is somehow barely surviving, or like a human being who is melting.

For my composition, I will be recreating a female in a similar pose who will be more lifelike than what we see in the original. She will seem to be made out of wax and she will appear to be melting. I may add an extra element such as a candle to the final to make it even clearer that she is made out of wax.

Objective Critique:

The piece itself is made of bronze and has a decent amount of movement and rhythm. If it was just an odd human being all pieced together, people might glance over it. But the fact that it is so oddly separated at certain places and so strangely arranged keeps your eyes moving over the sculpture. I would say that the applied texture on the sides of the sculpture shows decent rhythm, though overall the sculpture seems very disorganized to me.

The piece is naturally colored by the bronze medium, therefore it doesn't utilize color in a necessarily artistic fashion. For my composition, I will add a dark red to symbolize heat and perhaps intensity, and to represent an implied medium (wax). I would like to make it seem as though my sculpture, though mostly made of clay, is actually made of a shiny red wax. At the end of the sculpting process, I plan on melting a red wax candle over the sculpture to give it a melting appearance.

The interesting negative space between the limbs provides interesting movement.

The straight up and down appearance of most of the sculpture shows balance, as well as the bent knees bring balance by filling in the blank space that would exist had the legs been stretched out straight. I think that both legs being in the same position causes the sculpture to lack variety though, so in my composition, I will have the legs bent to different degrees to create the formerly lacking variety.

Pre-Production & Progress:

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Final Sculpture:

Creating this sculpture was a beautiful and emotional experience for me. As Glen Keane states that he believes drawing to be like a seismograph of the soul, so I think of all my art as an outward expression of something much deeper. Upon looking at the original subject, I saw someone who was divided, in separate pieces, yet was a singular human being. Heavier in some places than others, flatter and much more thin in some place than others... This, in a way, was very much like my life. I am very dedicated to all the things that I do, yet between school, work, extra studying, and the freelance projects I work on, in some areas of my life I am weighted down, and in some I am pressed thin. I am divided between the half of me that wants to dedicate all my time to school alone, and the other half that loves and adores the company he works for too much to leave them behind. In some ways, like the woman in the sculpture, I am pressed thin, weighed down, and divided. I am often melting in the heat of the things I know and love, yet I continue even in my darkest moments to press on, knowing that if I do everything right, keep dreaming, working, and persevere, I can use the things I hold to rebuild and eventually create greater and brighter things.

Even when I feel as though I am melting beneath the weight of it all, I'll do whatever I can to stay inspired and keep my flame lit. I will press on. And even in my hardest moments, the picture of my life that is painted will be something beautiful; perhaps something very much like this sculpture. Years from now I will look back on this moment and see clearly the place I was in life when I created this.

While I did not like the sculpture that inspired this one, I found a way to relate to it, and that ability to relate allowed me to create a beautiful thing. 

Perhaps that is the way life is: we may meet people who we might not like right away, we may judge and question others, but if we can look past our judgements and see the heart and soul of the person before us, relate to them, and put ourselves in their shoes, perhaps we can create beautiful things in life and in our relationships as well.

The piece is made of Super Sculpey clay modeled over armature wire, painted with a blend of acrylic paints, and coated in many places with a layer of red wax. 

While the skin is more smooth than the original, the drops of wax provide an organic looking texture that seems to have occurred naturally. The position of the body and the separation of the limbs, as in the original, creates movement. The red wax and color enhances the mood and creates the illusion of a single medium. The position of the body and the candle extending opposite of the legs creates balance, making the body seem like the center of the sculpture rather than the knees. The negative space provides a very interesting and dynamic silhouette. The melted wax throughout the entire piece provides rhythm. And the deep emotion and subject matter hopefully provides a connection to any audience who looks at it deeply enough.

I hope you enjoyed the journey I've had in creating this piece. 

Stay tuned for more. 

-Britain V.