Review

Sculptor's busts include his own calculated damage
It's similar to what time has done to ancient works

Gilbert A. Bouchard
Freelance

Friday, January 20, 2006

Clay sculptor Horst Doll poses with his bust of Caius Octavius.

Photo Credit : Rick MacWilliam, The Journal

Horst Doll’s Timeless Communicator

Showing at: Alberta Craft Council, 10186 106th St.
Until: Feb. 25, 2006

Sculptor Horst Doll displays pronounced big-picture tendencies in his Timeless Communicator exhibit.

While Doll's subject matter on display at the Alberta Craft Council boasts a wide array of historical and fictional heavy hitters – ranging from the Emperor Augustus, ancient Queen Dido and Monsieur Javert from Hugo's Les Miserables – his detailing and execution are confidently spare and abstract.

Most of the clay busts on display boast pared-down and unrealistic features and are often artificially cracked and battered.

“I like elongated faces and the sweep of a long nose,” says Doll, 65. “I like that the long faces draw more attention to themselves and I'm not afraid to play with proportions on the face or play with abstraction.”

The sculptor builds all his busts from thick clays slabs that start off quite plain, uniform and without life. “It's such a thrill to be able to install life and character into a piece day after day.”

Doll says his work of late has all been about the idea of time, starting with the historical, mythological and fictional references (both in subject matter and to the style and form of ancient sculpture) as well as making reference to the damage done to ancient work with the passing of time.

“I like damaged pieces and I like the fact that broken things automatically stand in for the passing of time,” he says, adding that broken incomplete objects can also be symbolic of how human memory degrades over time.

“I damage my pieces on purpose, but always find it really hard to do,” he says. To illustrate his point, he gestures to a bust of Alexander the Great, noting the places he knocked chunks off the sculpture's base and then glued them back on. He will also gouge out lines or marks on the faces of his pieces, doing the calculated damage after the piece has dried but before it is fired.

“With the Alexander bust, the damage was all the more appropriate given that he was much more of a destroyer and a conqueror and not a builder,” he says.

“That being said, he was also an incredible leader, but he did leave the Persian Empire in ruins in his wake. After he died the empire never did return to its former glory.”

When asked if he would see a connection between his artistic comment on Alexander and the current war in Iraq (another invasion headed by a leader with more of a reputation as a destroyer than a nation builder), Doll chuckles and says history – even ancient history – is “connected to today.”

The artist says history provides us with a hindsight array of events and past activities that can serve as useful echoes of contemporary happenings.

“That's one of the reasons I like working with clay. You have this material that's directly connected to the earth and ties you back to human art forms right into prehistory.”

Working in traditional clay pottery forms for the past three decades, Doll has been creating his busts for the last half-decade and of late has also been branching out into small torsos.

“I took a class in figure work at Harcourt House and discovered I not only liked making torsos, I was quite good at it. I really like the movement you get with the figure.”

© The Edmonton Journal 2006