100 Suns
1985
12' x 1 1/2' x 1' Steel and waxed newspaper.
A column of paraffin-wax impregnated first pages of a then current issue of the New York City Sun, an Afro-American community newspaper, is presented featuring on that first page comments of Bishop Tutu addressing the likelihood of violence impending in the struggle against apartheid in South Africa.
These pages are displayed loosely over-hanging one another on a black steel wire and rod structure, stiffened by shallow trusses, which rises 12' in a flat plane leaning freely against a wall. This dark rack of newsprint, starkly asserting a totemic posture, multiply displays one first page. The strength and rigidity of the steel structure barely visible beneath the translucent wax-impregnated paper film asserts a hidden strength in contrast with the vulnerability of its fragile skin.
The transience of the news itself, the impermanence of its material, the newsstand commonness, and the disposability of most of its content all argue for a time-out moment of reflection, as totems do, since in this our everyday world, stories of continuing and impending violence, wash over us daily, passing on then like the tides.
These pages are displayed loosely over-hanging one another on a black steel wire and rod structure, stiffened by shallow trusses, which rises 12' in a flat plane leaning freely against a wall. This dark rack of newsprint, starkly asserting a totemic posture, multiply displays one first page. The strength and rigidity of the steel structure barely visible beneath the translucent wax-impregnated paper film asserts a hidden strength in contrast with the vulnerability of its fragile skin.
The transience of the news itself, the impermanence of its material, the newsstand commonness, and the disposability of most of its content all argue for a time-out moment of reflection, as totems do, since in this our everyday world, stories of continuing and impending violence, wash over us daily, passing on then like the tides.