Sculptor Tom Price on Meaning in Material Experiments

15 hours ago7 min read2 comments

The stage of contemporary sculpture has found one of its most compelling players in Tom Price, an artist whose studio practice feels less like a traditional atelier and more like a vibrant, unpredictable rehearsal room where materials themselves are the principal performers. Price doesn't merely shape his media; he collaborates with them, engaging in a profound dialogue where substances like molten plastic, industrial resins, and repurposed consumer waste are not passive clay but active partners in creation.This intrinsic connection between figuration and abstraction in his work is the show's central theme, a duet where the recognizable human form emerges from, and retreats back into, radical formal experimentation. One can witness this in his celebrated series where heated plastic is dripped and layered, building forms that are at once eerily anatomical and defiantly non-representational, echoing the way a choreographer uses a dancer's body to express both a specific character and the pure, abstract beauty of movement itself.The 'meaning' he finds is not pre-ordained but discovered in process, much like an actor finds their character through improvisation, with each material investigation yielding its own narrative—a narrative of transformation, resilience, and the hidden life embedded in the mundane. Price discusses these fruits of his labor not as finished, polished statements but as scenes from an ongoing play, where the tension between the hand of the artist and the will of the material creates a dramatic frisson.His sculptures possess a backstage rawness; you can almost see the traces of the creative struggle, the moments of controlled accident and happy discovery that are so crucial to live performance. This approach places him in a lineage of process artists, yet his unwavering tether to the figure grounds the work in a deeply humanist tradition, preventing it from drifting into pure formalism.It’s a masterclass in balance, a production where the set, the actor, and the script are inextricably fused. The broader context of his work speaks to a contemporary desire for authenticity and material truth in an increasingly digital and synthetic world, offering a tangible, visceral experience that is both of our time and timeless. As he continues his material investigations, one is left with the sense of watching a brilliant, open-ended run, where each new piece is not a finale, but a captivating act in an ever-evolving artistic performance.

#featured

#Tom Price

#sculpture

#material experimentation

#figuration

#abstraction

#artist interview

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