Gedi SIBONY
Serving precisely the same purpose 2005
mixed media
49 x 38 x 8 in / 124.4 x 96.5 x 20.3 cm

Gedi Sibony (1973 New York) is an artist who uses found materials to create his work. Frequently these materials are sticks, garbage bags, plywood and cardboard.

The use of found materials goes back at least to the days of Synthetic Cubism (1912-1914), when fragments of newspaper or labels were affixed to the canvas as part of the composition. The tradition continued with Dada and was periodically revived, notably with Italy’s Arte Povera (Impoverished Art) in the 1960’s and a contemporaneous French movement, Supports/Surfaces. These movements challenged artistic practice in several aspects. They deconstructed the classic modes of art production (canvas, stretcher bars; cast bronze or carved stone), as well as making an emphatic claim to the aesthetic merits of their materials, in whatever finished state they were presented.

Gedi Sibony’s Serving precisely the same purpose takes on a sculptural form, though painting is also referenced in the silver pigment of the assemblage of branches. The metallic quality of silver reminds us that sculpture made from metals in their pure or alloy state, adds gravitas to the artwork. Is Sibony’s metallized sculpture ‘serving precisely the same purpose’, or is the reference to something else in the artist’s oeuvre, which we would have to discover by looking at different examples of it?

For all this, Sibony’s sculpture -for want of a better word- is meant to be viewed in a gallery or museum setting and in this, it claims its heritage and dignity, on a par with more conventional artworks. There is something elegiac about Sibony’s vision, transcending the mundanity of his materials. There is an elegance to Serving precisely the same purpose, echoed in other assemblages by the artist. The elements which make up this sculpture give it poise and the finished whole a totality which is visually satisfying.