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Internationally reknowned artist Robert Mangold’s primary artistic concern is the interrelationship of space, time and motion as expressed through movement in sculpture. Equally fascinated by natural systems – ranging from the sub-atomic to the cosmic – and the dynamics of man-made constructions, the inspirations for Mangold’s compositions are exceptionally far-ranging.
Although his earliest constructions contained figurative references, Mangold began working in a kinetic vocabulary as early as 1958. This places him among the small number of artists that constitute the first generation of kinetic sculptors and links him to the kinetic-constructivist lineage informed by the ideas of Naum Gabo and Moholy-Nagy. Developing his first wind-driven pieces at this time, he has continued to explore movement – both actual and implied.
Among his most renowned compositions, his wind-driven, stainless steel sculptures, which he labels Anemotives Kinetics, juxtapose the consistency of repeated movement in a single direction with the unpredictability of its cause: the wind.
Mangold has dedicated other works to examining space rather than motion; his I-Beam Series witnessed him operating within a predetermined set of dimensions – those of steel I-beams –to create daring meditations on space forms.
Mangold’s most recent series, PTTSAAES, (an acronym for the phrase, “Point Traveling Through Space At An Erratic Speed,”) can be seen as the culmination of his diverse efforts to integrate investigations of both space and movement as embodied in sculptural form. The ‘point’ and its ‘speed’ are purely implied.
Robert Mangold’s work is included in many public and private collections throughout the world. |
