For Turk, the subject of his art is often art itself: repurposing the heroic movements that epitomized ideals of progress, trading upon their enduring values of cultural capital. Turk’s One Twenty Five is an extension of a recent series of outdoor sculptures that play on Joseph Beuys’ concept of Social Sculpture: the world as a collaborative artwork, where everyone is an artist by virtue of contributing to society. Cast in bronze, Turk’s monolithic nails are set within the landscape, literally puncturing the earth with monumental evidence of a god-like craftsmanship. Transforming this motif into neon – replete with glowing shadow – Turk’s One Twenty Five, now referring to a metaphysical clock, pictures a nail on the gallery wall: simultaneously an armature, an artwork, and a vacancy sign, his own-brand insignia an open invitation.

One Twenty Five

Orange glass nail with red shadow

Nail

Sculpture

For Turk, the subject of his art is often art itself: repurposing the heroic movements that epitomized ideals of progress, trading upon their enduring values of cultural capital. Turk’s One Twenty Five is an extension of a recent series of outdoor sculptures that play on Joseph Beuys’ concept of Social Sculpture: the world as a collaborative artwork, where everyone is an artist by virtue of contributing to society. Cast in bronze, Turk’s monolithic nails are set within the landscape, literally puncturing the earth with monumental evidence of a god-like craftsmanship.

Both comic and provocative, Nail is a 12 metre bronze sculpture, treated as the title implies, to appear like a giant rusty nail. Standing at the entrance to French architect, Jean Nouvel’s shiny glass shopping centre, One New Change with the grand sixteenth century architecture of St Paul’s cathedral in the background, Nail is hammered between the ancient and modern. At the intersection of these two worlds, Nail is a nostalgic recollection of tools traditionally used by the construction industry and favoured by Turk’s archetypal white van man, now of less and less necessity in the modern architecture of One New Change. Its rustiness, meanwhile underscores the uselessness of this once useful object, while also suggesting the creep of the natural into the territory of the man-made. Not only a literal object, the nail doubles as a psychological object which suggests “nail in the coffin” and “nailed to the cross.” Rather more humorously, viewed from a certain angle, Nail appears to pin One New Change into the ground, although viewed from other angles, it hints at the empty space where what was nailed has long since been removed. A giant magnification of a miniature object, the closer the viewer stands to Nail, the more comically abstract the object appears, as by contrast, both the viewer and its surroundings appear to shrink.

Bronze - Permanent sculpture

Illusion

Public Sculpture

Both comic and provocative, Nail is a 12 metre bronze sculpture, treated as the title implies, to appear like a giant rusty nail. Standing at the entrance to French architect, Jean Nouvel’s shiny glass shopping centre, One New Change with the grand sixteenth century architecture of St Paul’s cathedral in the background, Nail is hammered between the ancient and modern.

Life scale rusty nail made in bronze appearing to have been hit in the ground at an angle

Figure

Patinated bronze

Trompe L'oeil

Life scale rusty nail made in bronze appearing to have been hit in the ground at an angle

Small Nail 

A nail hammered into the middle of a piece of white A4 paper.

Metaphysical Nail

3 inch nail & paper

Readymade

Work on paper

A nail hammered into the middle of a piece of white A4 paper.

Embroidery

Etching

Film

Found Object

Glass

Installation

Mixed Media

Object Trouvé

Painted Bronze

Painting

Photographic Work

Ready Made

Silkscreen

Aeroplastics Contemporary, Brussels

Ben Brown Fine Arts, London

David Nolan Gallery, New York

Galerie Krinzinger, Vienna

Maruani Mercier, Brussels & Knokke

Paul Stolper, London

Reflex, Amsterdam

Gavin Turk

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