(*1945, US)
Grassroots
Never too much, hardly enough

 Frederick Law Olmsted

The expression, sculpture garden less seems a typology than opens subsets of abstract space that intersect members of a patrimony tethered to artifices of guarded pleasures. Protected and preserved, they serve to define geopolitical boundaries. So, why is it that we see so many contemporary exhibitions staged in such defined parcels of land? Is it that parks, or, if you prefer, gardens, lend a pretense of legitimacy to the fact that without its arcane referent, sculpture might very well lose its authorial presence–objects scattered about the landscape catawampus, oblivious to the subtle variations in the terrain. Orphaned at birth.

Marooned

After a democratization process–that is, the transition of land use from private gardens of privilege to public spaces of leisure and recreation–the residual baroque relics that had been so firmly attached
to societal grace become inextricably linked to a variety of desperate civic activities commingling on a fragile veneer of topsoil, fully dependent upon a shared utilitarian substrate.

Invertible Value 

Consummate forms of work have nothing to do with degrees of permanency; temporary expressions are not by their nature incomplete in thought: whether here today and gone tomorrow or here to stay, they are equally viable excursions, if there is a sincere commitment to social value and sustainability.

Working from the premise of an economy of means, it is a pleasure to offer the following contribution to Sculpture Garden, Geneva, 2020, for your consideration: the introduction of a brief “detour” into the gardens’ existing irrigation plan so as to establish a systemic gesture that percolates from below rather than trickling down from above. Specifically, the addition of a new section of pipe directly into the existing irrigation system in the form of a “bulge” protruding above the grass surface.