This work in painted fiberglass and wood reveals Tim Scott’s interest in exploring the intimate relationship between color and sculptural form (volume, mass, proportion, gravity). The biomorphic shape of Pavan suggests a dynamic movement and a sense of gravity, while the placing on the floor and the human scale approach the object to the observer, who can walk around it and observe it from different viewpoints.

The title evokes a dance that dates back to sixteenth-century Europe, accompanied by a musical composition of a noble and slow pace, organized in two tempos. In Pavan, we also have such a ‘dual identity’: on the one hand, painted wooden boards that open like a fan, in a smooth gradation of blue, evoking a sense of harmony and balance; on the other, the white hemispheres in fiberglass, juxtaposed over a rounded and closed surface. The sculptural composition thus opens space for a movement of the imagination.

On the structural role of materials and color in his work the sculptor has stated:

‘Colour became for me a crucial issue in about 1964-1965… During that time I felt it was one aspect of sculpture that was paramount to its development, that it meant more than the coating of something with a surface skin and should consequently be thought about deeply. […] I myself used colour as an expressive force in the work by careful variegation of its qualities (i.e. tone, texture, intensity, etc.) in relation to the physical ones of shape. I hoped to make colour play a part expressively.’

The strength and the sense of identity of Pavan is grounded in its antithetical qualities: hot / cold, soft / rigid, curved / straight, sensual / austere. The visual weight suggested by its volume is counteracted by the materials used, molded to obtain stimulating, almost iconic forms, suggesting a symbolic quality. Presented with this game of balance and instability, of form, color and energies, the result seems to transcend the purely material to gain a metaphysical sense, engaging issues common to the lives of form and men.

MG
May 2010