This document provides an introduction to installation art and sculpture. It discusses key elements of sculpture like material, place, line, color, and scale. For example, it explains that material is important because it contains unique characteristics and every choice by the sculptor contains meaning. Place can also be important, as some sculptures are site-specific and their meaning is tied to the environment. The document uses examples from artists like Louise Bourgeois, Andy Goldsworthy, and Robert Smithson to illustrate these elements.

1. Introduction to
Installation Art Project
Intro Sculpture
Manami Ishimura

2. Objective
Contemporary sculpture is no longer just a finished object, further the
value has been placed on the provisional, and on procedures, and
processes. In this project, students explore the potential of art
throughout examining the materials surrounding them considering the
elements of sculpture.

3. What is Sculpture?
This artwork entitled The Curved House by Louise Bourgeois. We may
have a preconceived idea of what a sculpture should look like. If so, is
this a sculpture? And if so, what is the sculptor telling us?
It appears to be a house, but it is far too small to be anything but a
miniature doll’s house. It is made of solid mass, marble, with no space
for rooms inside; ”the object” lost the function to be a “house”.
The whole form appears to be curved: was the stone malleable at one
time? Fabricated not from steel nor cast in bronze, it is hewn from
pink marble. Why this particular material?
The artist presents the viewer with a simple opposition. Pink evokes
soft flesh, but the stone has been carved into a sharp-edged
geometric architectural mass – a child’s drawing of a house hardened
into stone. There is much more to consider but with this question
towards understanding has already begun.
What follows provides the information we need to discover the wealth
of meaning contained within sculpture, introducing the elements of
sculpture.

4. Elements of Sculpture
• The elements of Sculpture from sculpture’s visual
language and an understanding of them reveals the
structure and vocabulary of sculptural expression. In
this project, we focus on the elements below:
1. Material
2. Place

5. 1. Material
= The matter from which a thing is made.
• Material is first because everything is made from something.
Each material contains unique characteristics. The sculptor
must be aware of the numerous possibilities within a
particular material.
• Nothing the sculptor does to the material is neutral; every act
contains meaning.

6. 1. Material
• When we see a contemporary work for the first time,
one logical question might be: why did the sculptor
choose this particular material?
• This work made by the artist Andy Goldsworthy is
composed of iris leaves floating on the surface of a
still pond. The process that Goldsworthy selected
natural materials and the site to place them itself his
art practice. Moments after the photograph was
taken the work may have been washed away by the
next rain or in other ways.
• All these exacting decisions made by the sculptor
with regard to material, site and process are
fundamental in determining what we see and
therefore what we understand.

7. 1. Material
• In this work by Felix Gonzalez, “Torres”, which is a
pile of candy in the corner of gallery, you might be
tempted to take it. Further, you can actually take
one of those which used to be a taboo even to
touch an art in gallery or museum. Sculpture was
no longer confined to being cast in bronze or
display to just be seen.
• The hundreds of multicolored wrapped candies
may be interpreted as a silent offering to the
memory of the artist’s lover Ross Laycock, who
died of an AIDS-related illness. As an allegorical
representation, we read that the viewer is meant
to take and eat the candies as a remembrance of
Ross, thus granting him ‘perpetual life.’

8. 2. Place
=The environment that surrounds the object.
• The environment in which a sculpture is situated is either active or passive.
• In the active sense the object’s immediate environment plays a significant role in
how we understand a particular sculpture. The two are so entwined that to
remove one from the other is impossible without destroying the meaning of the
total work. (‘site-specific’ work)
• A passive environment means that the place surrounding the object is secondary
to it, for instance, galleries and museums: the white box. But it does not mean
place can be separated entirely from meaning. The relationship between location,
object, and meaning is complex.

9. Look at the wooden sculpture on the
left which are displayed in the white
box as usual as we see in gallery or
museum. Now look at the photograph
on the light showing dancers wearing
similar objects as headdresses.
How has the meaning of these objects
been altered now that they have been
removed from their original cultural
setting and placed in a museum?
What has been lost or gained by their
displacement?

10. 2. Place
• Robert Smithson’s Spiral Jetty is a large-scale site-
specific earthwork that actively engage with the
site, the Great Salt Lake in Utah. The work extends
about 500 feet from the shoreline and measures
approximately 300 feet across and is made with
Earth, rock and salt.
• In his writing, site and jetty are united; the one
cannot exist without the other. But nature is in a
continual state of transformation. Smithson
describe these changes using the word “entropy”.
• The natural alterations occur slowly over time,
while the basic stone and gravel structure of Spiral
Jetty remains intact.

11. Elements of Design
• Three-dimensional design consists of the strategies and tools an artist
or designer uses to execute an object in space. We will utilize the
Elements and Principles of Design to understand how to make
effective sculptural forms.
• In this project, we focus on the elements below:
1. Line
2. Color
3. Scale

12. 1. Line
• Line: The edge or outline of a form the meeting of planes; linear materials
include: wire, wood, matal rod, string or any materials with a long, thin
shape.

13. 3. Color/Value
• Color may be applied to the surface of a sculpture or inherent to the
material it is made from. Hue, tint and shade are words that describe
the character of color.
• Value is light and shadows on the surface of forms; quality of light
actually reflected by an object’s surface. Value changes might be
affected by the addition of color to the surface of a work.

14. 4. Scale
• The actual or relative dimensions of an object, or part of an object in
relation to one another
• The very large scale involve its environment as a part of the art. On the
other hands, the very small object may hold greater fascination for the
imagination than the very large.