SEAN SCULLY - A SPACE BETWEEN DUALITY AND DICHOTOMY.
'LANDLINE', Hanover Square - LONDON. Photographed by Tom Gu.
Image by Tom Gu for M-A (A SPACE BETWEEN).
The newly unveiled sculpture by Sean Scully in Hanover Square - corners the viewer with an abrupt stillness.
It's linear flatness - not unlike the two-dimensional experience felt when gazing upon a Sean Scully painting - is powerfully life-affirming and arrestingly visual.
The artists' idiosyncratic palette of stripes is immediately recognisable. A style that can be traced back to 1969 when Scully first visited Morocco and saw the patterned fabrics cut into jillabas worn by the hooded locals.
The Scully stripes are rugged yet meticulous and instinctively created - like handmade flags - the stripes of a chosen nation without the flash of stars.
In contrast 'Landline' is glossily polished, its glazed surfaces reflective of the well-healed neighborhood in which it resides.
Camouflaged into its environment and reflecting an ever-changing cityscape and time frame. From the Georgian limestone to industrial red brick and the darkly urban sleek of steel and glass. The delicacy of the trees and omnipresent sky - all reflected back and up from this totem of time.
Image by Tom Gu for M-A (A SPACE BETWEEN).
The sculpture's tertiary palette evokes the mystery of the artists' paintings - deepest charcoal flecked with grey - like a residue of another layer beneath - or a whisper of pigment caught up within the brush stroke, rust - like separated oil drops from meat juices that have solidified, verdigre green - leafy fresh - and darkly oxidised - Creamy limestone - warmly seductive and beneficent - and dove grey - feather light - patterned with the faintest chalken trails - as if from a passing aeroplane observed from afar.
The patination within the stone is precise in time and formation - sediments millennia old - not created for aesthetic appeal but from the chemical reaction of extreme pressure. A characteristic of truth selected for its solemn nobility - a surface unseen before - sliced open with unimaginable pre-dynastic Egyptian precision.
The diversity of the materials used within the work - chosen for colour are geographically tethered to the specific global quarries which harvest the earth's DNA - a direct link to the multi-ethnicity of the sculptures location.
The splendor of marble - a material forever connected with prestige, nobility, and strength - the cenotaph, the temple steps, the chic boutiques and hotel foyers of nearby Mayfair - the babies head baptised in the stone font - the carved headstone selected in memorium - a material chosen to begin and end a life - 'Landline’ seems destined to contribute to defining the legacy of an artist - whose work is collected within the most vaulted international museum collections - and yet this work pinpoints directly back to the British capital - the city of the artist's adolescence.
It is impossible to not feel the sober contemplation of another tower, rather taller than this one-story sculpture in the adjacent borough of Kensington and Chelsea.
Image by Tom Gu for M-A (A SPACE BETWEEN).
‘Landline’ by Sean Scully RA. Hanover Square, London W1S.