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| A Portrait of Chuck Close by Gerard Pas and Chuck Close 2001 During the winter of 1999 Gerard made the personal acquaintance of the American artist Chuck Close. Though he and Close had previous contact, this would be their first personal encounter with each other. After speaking with Chuck Close in his Soho studio, Gerard asked if it would be possible to do a portraiture of him. Chuck Close, though not exclusively a portrait painter, is generally best known for his portraiture work; as can be seen in the self portrait on the right. "Unlike
portraiture as it is generally known, I wanted this work to be radically
different and thus not follow the commonly understood confines of that
oeuvre. In mine and Chuck's subsequent New York conversations, I
asked Chuck if he would like to contribute to my work by donating one
of his used wheelchairs to the project: to which he agreed. I decided
that the best way for me to depict how I personally know "Close"
through my work, was to reinvent how most people saw him (pardon the pun).
After careful deliberations between us both, it was agreed that I would simply replace the wheels of Chuck's old wheelchair with large sawmill blades on the back and regular circular saw blades on the front. When the work is installed in situ, it is to be place on a plinth made up of large timbers and turned on long enough to send sawdust into the gallery. I first exhibited this sculpture/object as part of the exhibition "corpoREAL exCHANGE," presented by CrossPathCulture in association with the White Box Gallery - The Annex, New York; November, 2001. This exhibition included not only my collaboration with Chuck Close but also a large installation collaboration with Huang Chih-Yang of Taipei City, Taiwan. Thank you for all your support on this project Chuck. I not only appreciate your keen understanding of the human condition but your deep sardonic sense of humour. You and your work are most certainly on the "cutting edge" as I hope this portrait conveys. I would also like to give special thanks to Canon Hersey and everyone at CrossPathCulture for your confidence in my work and for making the first exhibition of this work possible. Thanks also go to Juan Puntes of White Box - The Annex for providing exhibition space in Chelsea, New York City and for your friendship and hospitality during my tenure in this space. Thank you also Ondi McMaster for all you help at White Box Gallery. Special thanks to New York City - you persevere while acclimatizing all states of human circumstance and thus we continue to look forward. Gerard
Pas - New York 2002 |
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... please click on any of the images below for an enlargement ...
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"Portrait
of Chuck Close" by Gerard Pas © 2001 installation of the sculpture during the exhibition "Corporeal Exchange" CrossPathCulture / White Box - The Annex, New York, 2001 |
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"I
made this "Portrait of Chuck Close" sculpture/object by
replacing the wheels of one of Chuck Close's personal wheelchairs
with circular-saw-blades." G. Pas |
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This
wheelchair was used by Chuck Close in his everyday life. It was used
in his Soho-New York studio to paint and for purposes of his daily
life. This wheelchair was given to Pas by Chuck Close for this portraiture.
After altering the wheelchair, Pas then placed it onto a plinth (stand)
of large wooden timbers. Small grooves cut into the timbers by the
wheels have displaced saw dust over the surface of the plinth. With
this collaborative sculpture Pas and Close paradigm shift the concept
of traditional portraiture into another realm -- a more dangerous
and provocative one. |
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The
wheelchair Chuck Close gave Pas was covered in various colours of
paint which Close had used over the course of working on his own paintings.
As can be seen in the image to the left, Close' splattered paint can
still be seen on different surfaces of the chair as well as the sawdust
beneath the blades. When Pas began to deconstruct the original wheelchair, he found that Close's chair had gathered hairs around the wheels axles. Whose hair, Chuck Close', his family's or just from people around the studio or on the streets? No one knows - but its fun to guess! As you can imagine, axles or spindles with such proximity to the ground collect hairs and other materials such as threads. Pas decided to leave these hairs from the original axles when he reassembled his portraiture. |
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"Portrait
of Chuck Close" by Gerard Pas © 2001 installation of the sculpture during the exhibition "All Access" CrossPathCulture Centre, New York, 2001-02 |
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After
exhibiting this work at the White Box Annex in Chelsea, New York,
Gerard realized that his installation elevated the chair, if not into
a safe mode, certainly a formal one. For his installation at CrossPathCulture's
Time Square location (in the heart of New York), he decided to make
the work a lot more dangerous by changing the organization of the
plinth for which the work was placed. Now it was as though the circular
saw blade wheels had already cut some serious pieces of lumber. The
work was also theatrically lit by professional Broadway technicians
to give it even more of an edge. |
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Gerard's
work is seductive in it's presentation and dangerous in it's reality.
Together with the colours and surfaces, this work stands alone on
the cutting edge of contemporary art and this is who Chuck Close is
to Gerard. With Gerard's and Chuck's disabilities this work will hopefully
reflect a true understanding of 'disabled art' as 'disabled art'.
No one will ever look at art made from or in a wheelchair the same
again! |
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This
portrait project - collaboration with Chuck Close is not the first
or the last time that Gerard has used the motif of wheelchair in his
art. We found it uncanny how this sculpture was almost a deconstruction
of an earlier painting which he had done in the late eighties "Vision
of Utopia". Its as though all of the artifice in the painting
has somehow fallen down under the wheels, beneath the sculpture. To see more of Gerard's work from this period of his production as seen in "The Late Eighties Gallery" please click here. |
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"Portrait
of Chuck Close" Quicktime and Flash Movies by Gerard Pas © 2001 - 2002 |
Gerard's made several movies of this sculpture using differing perspectives, so that you could see the work from different angles. Please click on the above image to view a selection of these dynamic media. |
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"Portrait
of Chuck Close" by Gerard Pas © 2000 |
Gerard
also created a digital portrait of Chuck Close in the year preceding
this sculpture. It's in the "Friends Gallery" of GerardPas.com |
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see the dynamic media |
