Au Loup!!

I am honored to announce that I have been awarded a generous grant from Patrick Collison and Tyler Cowen as a part of their vision for a New Aesthetics in the 21st century.

I have been awarded the grant for a public sculpture project that begins with an empty pedestal on top of a grassy hill in Parc Buttes-Chaumont, overlooking Paris. The space was left vacant after the original sculpture was melted during WWII. The proposed public sculpture project will place a new site-specific sculpture on the abandoned pedestal, referencing the history of the park to build the future from fragments of the past.

The sculpture will be created using a 3D scan captured from one of the last remaining editions of the original piece, Au Loup!! by Louis Auguste Hiolin. Continuing the history of neoclassical imitation, the new sculpture imagines how our history will be rediscovered and interpreted in a distant future, provoking questions about archeology and authenticity, presenting a future perspective on artifacts from the present.

In the beginning of 2020 I lived in Paris for a residency at Cité des Arts, where I worked to gain permission to create the public sculpture installation. Although the pandemic halted the project I continued my efforts to research and strengthen the concept. A major breakthrough came in 2023 when I tracked down one of the last remaining editions of Louis Auguste Hiolin’s original sculpture Au Loup!! and traveled to rural Michigan to 3D scan it.

The new sculpture will be created using 3D printed molds, proposing the machine as an apprentice. The contemporary interpretation will be produced using a composite polymerized plaster, referencing the history of the park, where Plaster of Paris got its name. The alpha-gypsum mixed with fiberglass and bronze powder will emulate real metal and allow the piece to patina naturally outside, while acknowledging the synthetic nature of contemporary materials.

I intend to document the journey of attaining permissions and making the sculpture on this blog in an effort to demystify the creative process and to push myself out of my comfort zone.

The project is a continuation of my ongoing series Future Fragments.