HIGHRISEVESSELS, 2005Yellow Highrise is a kind of scale-model for an imaginary transient architecture. Split like a fruit to create an entrance that offers access to the interior space, its inner chamber suggests an atrium ringed with balconies for twelve floors. Yellow Highrise is a continuation of my investigations into the interface of object and architecture. It might read as vessel or as building. As in previous projects, this curvilinear semi-transparent model building has been designed and constructed to imply a membrane capable of swelling and retracting. Built in sections with visible fasteners, there is also the suggestion of a potential for disassembly and reassembly. Biological associations come into play, the structure referencing at once a pair of superimposed urns or bulbs, a high rise conceived of as fantasy hive. White Highrise is a variation on Yellow Highrise. Here the structure is covered in a more transparent skin and rises an additional four feet. Like Yellow Highrise, I see this sculpture as a model for an imaginary tall building. But in spite of the fact that the structure is ridged and the form almost radially symmetrical, the membrane here is more porous, the boundary between inside and outside less of a barrier. Both sculptures are almost radially symmetrical, I imagine these forms having been turned on a wheel, spun rather than built. But they were built and are built every time they are moved. Each is assembled out of over 300 separate steel frames covered in greenhouse shadecloth. Any window is a charged site, the place where interior and exterior negotiate. This is true whether I am looking in, looking out, looking up, or looking down, whether I am looking or being looked at. The circular opening at the top of the dome is its oculus. When the window is centered at the top of a dome it is like an abstracted eye, a divine eye, and becomes the source of surveillance. Standing beneath such a window I am at once illuminated by benign light and caught in the act. In 2005 White Highrise was presented at the American Academy of Arts and Letters in New York City and received an American Academy of Arts and Letters Award in the Arts.
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