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Lux Art Institute, San Diego’s first LEED certified interactive art destination, presents Australian-born sculptor Timothy Horn as the first artist-in-residence of the 2010/2011 Season.
With a fondness for using unusual materials – such as blown-glass, rubber, and rock sugar – Horn is known for creating large-scale sculptures that challenge viewers to find the meeting point between the natural and constructed worlds. Inspired by decorative arts and engravings from European baroque and rococo, as well as by 19th century studies of organic forms such as lichen, coral and seaweed, Horn’s work conveys fantasy and ornament but is underpinned by craftsmanship and concept.
From September 9 to October 9, the artist will be living at Lux as he constructs a sculpture of nickel-plated bronze and blown glass for his “Tree of Heaven” series. Visitors can “see art happen” while he is in studio and view his exhibit, featuring numerous examples of large-scale, multi-media sculpture through October 30, 2010.
“The delicacy and intricacy of Tim’s fobs that will hang like Victorian jewelry on our walls belie their scale,” said Lux Director Reesey Shaw. “From the oversize works in the ‘Tree of Heaven’ series to the full-size carriage made of crystallized rock sugar, these are ornate icons with heft and muscle. They will leave us charmed by their details and overpowered by their enormity.”
For his bejeweled wall pieces, Horn melds the organic and the artificial into a delicate silhouette by drafting a complex pattern and using grafted imagery of natural forms. A tree-like structure is constructed in wax and then cast in bronze and nickel-plated. Lustrous, large pearls fabricated from mirrored blown glass are the final baroque touch.
Other examples of Horn’s oeuvre to be displayed at Lux are his 18th-century wall sconces made of transparent rubber, as well as a Cinderella-like carriage and a 150-pound chandelier both encrusted in honey-colored, crystallized rock sugar. The sugar-gilded chandelier and carriage were featured in an exhibit at the de Young Museum in San Francisco that referenced the rags-to-riches life of Alma Spreckels, widow of millionaire sugar baron Adolph Spreckels, who was brother of real estate magnate John D. Spreckels, one of San Diego’s founding entrepreneurs.
A graduate of Victorian College of the Arts and Australian National University, Horn received his MFA from Massachusetts College of Art. His work has been featured in exhibitions at the de Young Museum in San Francisco, the Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh, the Museum of Arts & Design and at the Armory Art Show in New York, Gallery of Modern Art in Brisbane, and the National Gallery of Australia in Canberra. He has received grants from the Pollock-Krasner Foundation, Massachusetts Cultural Council, and LEF New England. Residencies include the British Academy in Rome, Yaddo in upstate New York, the Fine Art Works Center in Provincetown and RAIR in New Mexico.
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