Thursday, August 14, 2014

Autumn Dean/ Albert Paley


Albert Paley

            Albert Paley  is a Philadelphia born sculptor born in 1944. He is best known for his contemporary sculptures that are usually made of steel and then painted. His best known work is large scale public works. There is an aspect of his work that was made famous by Hollywood as well.
            Albert is sort of bipolar in the way he makes work. Some of his works are black patina steel color and look just like the steel in its natural form. I like this because it lets the black smith elements realy shine through. This especially looks great on the solid steel he bends into twirls and loops and accentuates the taffy like quality steel has when heat is applied. This is the style he uses to make his functional work. He makes very high end very expensive tables and benches and candle holders from steel.
            The other side of Paley’s work is his public pieces. He tends to make these large scale steel works pop in whatever urban setting they happen to be going into for installation. The pop that these sculptures give their new home is  of color. These large works are often bright and interesting in the pallet that he chooses. Sometimes they will be one solid color like the red piece called “Regeneration” in Iowa.
            One of the big batman movies that way made a few years ago had some of his designs in it and he didn’t even know until he saw the movie. What happened was some of the visual set design staff had stolen his shapes and design ideas and used it as their own. It was so uncanny that he sued universal studios and won.

No comments:

Post a Comment