P H I L I P L I V I N G S T O N
March 2005, Sculpture Magazine
Philip Livingston's Breath sculptures
are haiku in visual form—distinct, beautiful, and elegant.
The viewer's senses respond to the optical illusions
of
theater scrim and lighting effects that Livingston has staged.
The tensile strength of steel wire and aluminum—suspending lightweight
bamboo or scrim—is disorienting, as well as perceptually engaging and
exhilarating. Livingston defines space through the absense of mass. Space
has been parcelled and collected...made visible with exotic shadows, soft
curves, and light reflected from metallic edges.
Breath
is the clock that moves like a pendulum over our lives. The significant element
of Breath, Bamboo is a rope moving across space. The rope embraces
the air like a lip openned wide, forming the arched cavity for breath to enter
or escape. The power of Livingston's work is that he convinces us that some
kind of breath continues on the other side of a perfectly still body. If this
is true, then death is not the end of time, just a rope joining one space
to another.
Livingston's intuition allows him to find invisible
forms in infinite space, connections that would otherwise be ignored. He makes
the invisible visible...
Like the sails on a boat, Breath, 15 Cones waits expectantly for a
gust of wind. The hanging scrims are suspended from the ceiling, and a horizontal
dowel traversing the width of the work anchors the viewer's vision, just as
the horizon line becomes a focus at sea. The dowel creates a sensation of
mass (even though it is not logical to look for mass in a work that hangs
from the ceiling and probably weighs no more than five pounds). However, Livingston's
pleasure is to play with mass where there is none, challenging notions of
what is ordinary and what our perception accepts as normal.
In Breath, Pause, dark shadows edge against pure light, and middle
gray tones layered on white space become black without warning. Rather than
feeling cold and industrial, the scrim shimmers with light while absorbing
shadow into its metal folds, making it seem soft and inviting, like a blanket.
Livingston gives the work intensity by elevating a simple construction device,
rivets, into an element of aesthetic significance. The wooden curve is not
a complete sphere, but...makes a visual connection with the round rivets.
Livingston has created a strong perceptual relationship between something
invisible and something real. He understands how to sift through subliminal
gestures to create interest and drama.
In his work, materials reflect the tenuous and delicate line that exists between
breath and death. The eyes and mind compare the concise and slender connections
in Breath, Pause, or Breath, Bamboo, with the fragile but specific
connection the body requires to keep breathing. Livingston turns space into
form and makes the invisible visible: breath is suspended between cantilevered
bamboo and scrim instead of flesh and bone.
-Stephanie Bowman