2009

12 electromagnetic levitation modules, 12 inflatable balls, plywood, sheet aluminum, paint, cable

63 × 81 × 15 inches

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The mission of the Museum of Sketches — “to illuminate the creative process” — is realized through a unique collection of artists’ sketches and models.

Arguably a romantic Modernist project – housing the “Eureka” moment – the Museum’s unruly collection and salon-style exhibition mode challenge conventions of art viewing.

Multiple versions and variations of artworks are presented
without resolution.

Viewing is alert and uncertain.

Hungarian-born French artist Marta Pan (1923-2008) is represented in the collection with small-scale models of large commissioned works, hand-drawn construction documents, and small black-and-white photographs of completed sculptures in situ.

Browsing her artist monograph in the Museum library, I discovered an early image of Pan’s “Sculpture flottante I,” 1961, commissioned by the Kroller-Muller Museum in Otterlo, The Netherlands.

Inspired and provoked by the Museum’s mandate, I set out to re-make Pan’s elegant, biomorphic sculpture.

My tools included the resources of MIT, where I was based as an artist researcher and fellow at the Center for Advanced Visual Studies, founded in 1967 by Hungarian-born American artist Gyorgy Kepes, a contemporary of Marta Pan.

The hand-drawn exhibition catalogue, Exhibition Manual, produced
in conjunction with “Everything Trembles,” is an irregular record of
the process.

Very little is copied.

The original repeats.