Rollin Marquette: Exhibition Essay
From Minnesota Artists Exhibition Program
Rollin Marquette: New Sculpture
Rollin Marquette’s latest site-specific sculpture, Untitled, on view here in the Minnesota Artist Exhibition Program (MAEP) galleries through March 18, presents his signature Minimalist work with maximum impact. Here he virtually alters your perception of space.
Marquette’s mix of pure form and experimental media combine to make works that test the limits of their physical space. Crisp, formal lines and precise details, along with materials such as steel, cable, neoprene (synthetic rubber), and ballistic gelatin (a synthetic resembling muscle tissue) create a sculpture designed to investigate the ways humans interact with their environment.
Marquette enters every potential exhibition space with a keen eye. Each installation is formed in reaction to the existing environment, and the sculpture is shown only during that specific exhibition. Marquette, who delights in the creative process, is unconcerned that his sculptures have such limited lifespans.
Part of Marquette’s interest in process reveals itself in repetitive forms. An earlier work, Untitled (1996), featured a construction made of chicken wire that resembled a telephone booth. Hand-made lead weights dangled from cords that extended from plastic tubes of pasteurized cheese lodged in the wire-mesh holes. Honey-well (1997) boasted 115 bundles of pencils. Matchbox (1998), featured in the MAEP exhibition of that year titled “Common Objects/Obsessive Forms,” invited viewers into a 10 x 10 x 10-foot metal room in which thousands of wooden matches protruded from the walls. The repetitive forms created welcoming and meditative spaces that drew viewers in before they noticed the details.
Matchbox and Closet (1997) were both lined with neoprene to eliminate outside influences. In Subtract (2000), five stainless steel tubes allowed light from the outside into an underground room. Marquette described it as “a light, introspective, meditative space that happened to be bunker-like.” This space beckoned visitors to enter, luring them into a potentially uncomfortable situation.
Newer works use steel, wood, and cables, but focus on balance and tension. In Untitled (2004), a 16-foot, galvanized steel plate swayed in the wind at Franconia Sculpture Park. The plate was held in place by nylon ropes anchored to wood posts implanted in the ground 100 feet away. At Franklin Art Works, Marquette’s Untitled (2001) featured a massive, 11,000-pound steel structure holding 1,000 feet of looped rope.
Untitled, shown here, struggles to contain itself within the walls of the MAEP galleries. A blackened ring of end-cut balsa wood hovers nine feet above the floor. Its circuitous route leads through a rough-cut hole in the gallery wall that exposes metal studs and drywall. The ring is held aloft by eight cables attached to steel-beam supports that edge into the doorways and nearly bump up against the walls. Masts extend from the beams to hold the cables’ tension, and bunker-like piles of burlap bags filled with steel scrap act as ballast at the end of each beam. These rough materials stand in contrast with the gallery’s sheen of marble and limestone.
Marquette chose end-cut balsa wood for its light weight and the grid-like pattern it creates. He waxed the beams to give them a warm, leathery texture. The tactile materials beg to be closely examined. Despite the ruggedness of its parts, the structure conveys a lightness that suggests the central ring could gently float away.
Untitled challenges conceived notions of art and architecture and the relationship between the viewer and his or her surroundings. Like Anish Kapoor, whose recent Sky Mirror pulled the Manhattan skyline down to eye-level, Untitled integrates the viewer with the work itself. Kapoor accomplished this with reflective surfaces. Marquette does it by literally bringing the viewer into work. As the ring can never be seen in its entirety, part of the viewer’s task is to mentally complete the work.
The tension and balance required to keep Untitled’s ring stable are feats of creative engineering. The industrial materials amid the grandeur of the galleries create aesthetic tension. Marquette balances each element to allow sculpture and architecture to exist as one.
Marquette grew up in New Jersey poring over books about World War II and military field guides. He is admittedly fascinated by the technology and creativity that goes into the invention and design of ballistics and munitions. He is fascinated not only by the actual products, but also by the technology, precision, and beauty behind the tools of the military establishment.
Marquette went to SUNY-Albany to earn an MFA in sculpture after receiving an undergraduate degree in psychology at Clarion University in Pennsylvania. He spent a year working for Mark di Suvero and Socrates Sculpture Park in Queens, New York, before arriving in Minnesota in 1996.
The sculptor’s work falls firmly in the Post-minimalist realm of Joseph Beuys, Walter De Maria and Wolfgang Laib, whose conceptual use of materials examine the relationship between the mind, body, and architecture. These artists explore a culture or as story: Laib's pollen-and-milk installations explore Eastern religions and Beuys’s lard and felt sculptures recall his World War II experience. Marquette’s use of steel, neoprene, and cable offer up American industrial and military culture. His blatant use of the materials forces us to reconsider their everyday use. He says his preferred medium, steel, “is this great discovery that has changed the world.” Yet it’s ubiquitous, causing us to take it for granted.
Marquette manipulates steel to create grand works that defy gravity. He fills spaces with the drama, creating complex reactions.
