PRESS RELEASE
Kevin Francis Gray
Momentary Monumentality
Rudolf Tegner’s Museum, Dronningmølle, Denmark, 15 April – 20 October 2024
In dialogue with Rudolf Tegner’s majestic portraits of human figures, traditionally crafted from plaster, marble, and bronze, Kevin Francis Gray’s exhibition Momentary Monumentality showcases a site-specific, large-scale installation alongside a series of abstract, medium-scale plaster models. These pieces mingle and interact with Tegner’s sculptures and casts, which have inhabited the museum for nearly a century, sharing a mutual emphasis on monumentality and materiality.
Beneath its ethereal glass ceiling, the central chamber hosts a ten-metre-high plaster installation. Finding their figurative form through the build-ups and amalgamations of the off-white dense matter, a rabble of human silhouettes significantly larger than life-size incorporates the original material into their body shapes while simultaneously seeping out the solidity of the medium. In this perspective, the work embodies the concept of Heraclitan vitalism, which fundamentally rejects an inert sense of matter, instead evoking a cosmological energy. Much like Tegner’s models gracefully poised in their plastic poses throughout the space, the human figures are almost choreographically arranged and displayed within the structure. Despite their static nature, they exude a palpable sense of creative energy and atavistic dynamism.
Ambitious in material and impressive in scale, the monumental sculpture is paradoxically momentary despite its apparent solidity, transcending materiality while retaining a profoundly grounded nature. In this way, it is reminiscent of Tegner’s powerful and heroic figures, which, amidst their magnificence and confidence, reveal an underlying tenderness and vulnerability, portraying raw human emotions and struggles. The grandiosity of the work compensates for the frailty and weaknesses of the artist. It speaks of something that exists in grandeur but is transient in the context of life. By capturing the release of imminent energy expressed in and through matter, the installation seems to originate in the same combination of fragility and strength, at once both fleeting and enduring. In a word, human.
Gray created the work within the ambiance of a live artisan workshop. He involved collaborators in the crafting of the piece during the installation weeks, choreographing a performative element that narrates the underlying story of the history of art-making. This collective process delves into notions of community, collaboration and discussions surrounding the artist’s interaction with artisans, exploring its contemporary relevance. Engaging with artisans, Gray pushes the formal language of his sculpture and representative figuration, extending his creative boundaries beyond the artistic realm to encompass considerations of the political and social landscape, fostering meaningful interaction.
Amidst the multitude of statues and casts residing in the museum, there is a group of new abstract models from Gray’s latest body of work. This series marks Gray’s transition from figuration to abstraction, metonymically rendering the human figure through its constituent parts - the eye, the nose, the hand, the foot - which undergo an outlined reduction to simplified shapes and often geometric symbols. However, the figure is not eradicated but rather elevated to the general; it is made to appear universal through abstraction, not despite it. In this manner, the human body retains implicit figurative qualities through the inherent rationality and dynamic tensions between its parts and the multitude of perspectives they evoke.
At its core, Momentary Monumentality revolves around sculpture as a medium for exploring the interplay of matter and form within the dimensions of space and time. The dialogue between Tegner’s and Gray’s works pivots around the themes of monumentality and materiality, revealing the underlying gentleness and fragility of both artists and their creations. Through collaborative labour, sculpture emerges as more than just an artistic expression, it becomes a dynamic practice capable of shaping and influencing the cultural and social landscape.