Ideas behind “Cast Shadows”:

1. The process of casting iron is a fleeting event that leaves residue in different ways. Works submitted address this phenomenon in various way.
2. Artists who utilize cast iron produce “permanent” products in iron not only as work unto itself, but also as document to the event.

3. Iron casting process is connected to a long history of metal art, industry, and human history. Cast iron artworks are in a sense living in the shadows cast by this rich past. As well, contemporary artists are casting their own shadows onto those around and into the future.

4. There is a digital relationship between the curators from Illinois and North Carolina. There is a line like a cast shadow from a sundial that goes back and forth between Denton and Akagawa, two gnomon.

Saturday, January 30, 2010

Andrew Denton



Aura Suit
Stainless steel, fireproof blanket, steel, leather, bronze slag, cast iron. 80” x 36” x 32”

This is a physical representation of the artist’s aura. The reflective stainless steel, which provides the structure of the basic form, is reflective of light. This will light up with the flames and glow of molten metal during an iron pour.  It will look as though it is made up of fire, similar to the wrathful Buddha, Heruka, depicted in Vajrayana Buddhist art.  The inside is lined with fireproof blanket, which references Joseph Beuys’s use of felt and the artist’s welding career, but it is functional as well as thematic because it provides some protection from the stainless steel that may get hot while casting iron. This blanket material will also be light and fluffy looking so that it will simultaneously reference the compassionate side of the artist/Buddha that are usually depicted floating in the sky upon clouds. 
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