John Chamberlain - The Foam Sculptures (Hardcover)

Here is the flip-side of John Chamberlain's well-known crushed car sculptures: his work in foam. Just as revelatory in their formal sophistication, these works, primarily made from 1966 to 1970, with a few made in the late 1970s and early 1980s, boggle the eye with their simplicity. To make them, Chamberlain looped rope around a mass of plain or painted urethane foam and tightened it to create dynamic tensions, which resulted in seductively rounded volumes. These sculptures are essential to Chamberlain's oeuvre, and this is the first publication to address them. Its first section is based on the Marfa, Texas, Chinati Foundation exhibition of 2005-2006, with installation shots and photographs of each exhibited piece; the second section assembles a total of 85 foam sculptures, constituting an almost complete catalogue of this group, and an update to Chamberlain's catalogue raisonne of 1986. Essays by Klaus Kertess, Iris Winkelmeyer and Marianne Stockebrand treat the sculptures in the larger context of Chamberlain's oeuvre and discuss the issue of conservation.