Sprawl
Eric Glavin
October 4, 2000 – April 15, 2001
Eric Glavin, Sprawl, 2000; 14' x 12' x 3.5', aluminum siding, steel tubing, roofing paper, light fixtures, concrete pad (16' x 16'), paint
Artist Statement
The Sculpture Garden has traditionally been viewed as a bastion of nature within the confines of an urban environment - a sanctuary of sorts. The site also has strong historical implications as part of one of the oldest neighbourhoods in downtown Toronto, and the projects there have typically referred either to this heritage, or to the acres of wilderness that existed there long before the city's foundations were staked out. The intent of this position, in recalling an earlier context for the site, seemingly is about polarizing the distinctions between natural and developed states in a way which mythologizes the boundary between the two, a boundary that is actually much more ambiguous than this strict dichotomy would suggest. I am interested in how to locate the boundary, literally, in relation to the city's centre.
When traveling away from the city's downtown core we experience the transition to nature very slowly, drawn out over hundreds of kilometers, and for part of that journey we are passing through a zone that visually and literally straddles the urban and the rural. This area, instead of being dotted with residential sub-divisions, is usually sectioned off into industrial 'parks', each containing dozens of sprawling single and multistory complexes. Typically, the visual characteristics of these self-contained buildings do not make reference to either the company's interconnectedness to urban commerce or to the Indigenous landscape the building's presence has clearly displaced. Rather, the simple geometric forms which are often the basis for their design make it appear as if the buildings aspire to be seen as a type of sculpture - formalist constructions offset by the surrounding landscape rather than integrated with it.
In order to reconnect the viewer to this less sensitive and more pragmatic approach that is usually taken to natural settings on the periphery of the city's limits, I have adopted a stance that is in direct contradiction to how the Sculpture Garden site has traditionally been viewed. I have chosen to treat it as a 'neutral' parcel of land, a section of real estate similar to any other which one might find in an underdeveloped area of the city and subject to the normal constraints of building codes.
The shallow, box-like structure of the work is a scaled-down version of the ultimate contemporary architectural form, suitable for a plethora of different possible uses: the store box-outlet. Generic vessels articulated through featureless facades, these structures proliferate the urban/sub-urban landscape of late-capitalist culture, optimizing its inherent economic desire for greater transience.
At the same time, the structure makes open reference to the formal traditions of minimalist sculpture, and in particular to the works of Canadian artist Robert Murray's from the late 1960's, such as La Guardia and Chilcotin, which also sought to integrate the urban characteristics of modernism with the Indigenous Canadian landscape. In doing so, I have continued my interest in the residual legacy of minimalism's reductivist aesthetic and its on-going presence within the urban environment.
