Tom Price: The Alchemy of Matter and Meaning in Sculpture

4 hours ago7 min read

In a revealing dialogue, sculptor Tom Price detailed his profound engagement with materials, framing his practice as a collaborative exchange with substances like resin, tar, and recycled plastics. He treats these not as passive elements to be controlled, but as active partners with inherent histories and behaviors.Price's methodology is a deliberate, contemplative process. He spoke of transforming bitumen with heat, observing as it evolves into a viscous fluid that cools into forms echoing geological strata and urban erosion.This practice transcends pure abstraction, functioning instead as a form of material portraiture that captures the essence of a substance's existence. His celebrated 'Meltdown' series—chairs formed from melted consumer plastics—stands as a potent commentary on consumption.Each piece acts as an archaeological relic of the modern age, where items like hair dryers and keyboards shed their original purpose to coalesce into a new, biomorphic entity. Price emphasizes allowing the innate qualities of his mediums to guide the sculpture's final shape, a conscious relinquishment of artistic control that highlights a deep respect for his materials.His work occupies a compelling space where the human form is implied through material behavior—a slumped, cooling mass of tar can convey a sense of fatigue and vulnerability akin to the human body. For Price, the experimental process itself is where meaning is forged; investigating how materials respond to heat and pressure reveals their narrative.This approach challenges traditional artistic hierarchies, elevating industrial and discarded matter into subjects of beauty and introspection. Each sculpture is a frozen moment from an ongoing dialogue, a permanent artifact of a transient state. His studio emerges as a site of perpetual transformation, where significance is not dictated but discovered in the persistent search for a connection between the manufactured and the elemental—a quest that parallels our own navigation of an ever-changing world.

#Sculpture

#Tom Price

#Material Experimentation

#Figuration

#Abstraction

#Contemporary Art

#Artist Interview

#featured

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