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L.A. Louver will celebrate its 30th anniversary with the first U.S. presentation of Peter Shelton’s one hundred and eighty-eight-part work entitled, godspipes. These translucent fiberglass, hollow forms, which are ribbed with lead, possess hydraulic and pneumatic references that also allude to elements of the human body, including torsos, limbs, vertebrae, joints, and bodily organs. The sculptures are intimate in scale and delicate in appearance. Their power is defined both by their interrelationship, and by the framework in which they are viewed. Although hung on the gallery walls as disjointed fragments, in the aggregate, they become an exotic biocatalogue of structures of containment, transition and transmission. They may be viewed either as the veinal and arterial micro world within us, or as monster conveyances or retorts in the house of Gargantua. The spectator is at once enlarged and reduced in their presence.
Created during the 1990s, godspipes references,
by fragmentation, many of the sculptures Shelton had made
in the twenty years leading up to their creation, as well
as heralding forms that he has made in the new millennium.
Formerly exhibited at the Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin
in 1998, the presentation of godspipes at L.A. Louver will
redefine the gallery space. The catalogue Peter Shelton godspipes
blackelephant house, published by the Irish Museum of Modern
Art and the Henry Moore Sculpture Fund in 1998, is available
at L.A. Louver.
