|
Description:
Otto
Rigan's Target Marks graces the entry of Target Corporation's
Financial Services facility in south Tempe. Visitors and employees
walk through six glass and stone sculptures on their way to the
facility's main lobby. The six sculptures are between 8- and 10-feet
tall, made of natural cleft limestone and weigh between 1,500 and
3,000 pounds apiece. The natural texture and color of the stone
relates to the landscape and the formal pattern and precision of the
glass relates to the architecture and the sophistication of the
corporation.
Funding:
This project was funded by the individual developer as a requirement
of Tempe's Art in Private Development Ordinance.
Artist biography:
Although
Rigan was trained as a painter, he has pursued many broad-ranging
and cross-disciplinary projects throughout his career. While still
in college he completed his first large-scale public commission. In
his early 20s he apprenticed to a master architectural glass
craftsman. In his late 20s he wrote and photographed four books and
lectured widely on their subjects. It wasn’t until Rigan was in his
early 30s that he began to develop the sculpture for which he is
most noted. His interest in the temporal medium of glass and how it
manipulates light and the permanence and density of stone, merged
into a series of sculptural explorations that continue to this day.
Rigan splits his time between making studio-based autonomous works
and applying his "way of seeing" to public and corporate spaces.
Often the larger commissions merge architectural, landscape and
other disciplines as an extension of the Artist’s palette. He
started an Architectural practice in addition to his other studio
activities.
Artist statement:
Target Marks
is one of the Artist’s Markers. Markers
seek to find a balance between the unpredictability of found
material and the exactness of the sawn "marks." These marks imply
some sort of oblique language, while the stone unselfconsciously
tells its own story. Neither the stone nor the "language" of the
marks is meant to overwhelm each other. In these pieces the artist
seeks parity, balancing the conscious and unselfconscious
components. Usually, a Marker is a standing piece in
reference to the prehistoric "standing stones" common to the United
Kingdom. |
