Tim Rusterholz
The Light of Frank Dux and the Saint,2010
Bronze resin, wood, plaster, steel, glass eyes, LED lights, Bloodsport Fight scene projection
8x8x8'
Running with the Giraffe, 2010
Documentary Film
Still Image
Artist Statement
On a mountaintop in Kenya, a priest conducts a sermon at the foot of a monumental Pieta. The cement shrine peaks at sixty feet. Mary is wearing blue, as Jesus falls back into a rocky embrace. Old nuns climb to pray at the red paint on his feet. I can hear the Kamba beat vibrating from the drums while the choir begins their song. Standing there, I am confronted by a state of spiritual and physical self- reflection, as the European ideals of pain and suffering in religious classical sculpture are re-filtered to third-world poverty.
As the majestic Pieta overlooks Kenya, the Elgin Marbles are not in the Parthenon, and a bronze Lenin ascends on a street corner in Seattle, while the specificity of St. Peter’s Basilica is no longer about St. Peter. I search for new meaning and extract progress in realistic figurative sculpture through installation and video work. My work takes advantage of the skilled hand as a clay modeler, mold maker, and Styrofoam carver. I celebrate and exploit my subjects by probing the history of ornate Baroque altarpieces, exploring the humanistic representation of political portraits, and monopolizing heroic symbols from Greek mythology, to communist idols, to modern day celebrity. My work challenges our assumptions of value by promoting faux dense metal and stone in light plastic, shamelessly revealing its artificial fabrications. My playful use of wood and plaster investigates monumentality through constructivist, minimalist, and architectural tendencies, while my figures employ a speaking-likeness to reveal an indefinite state of mind in raw materials. I am concerned with the imitation of the classical over time and the philosophy of beauty to challenge the iconic power of recognizable images, asking the question of how we represent in the contemporary through realistic portraits and irrational monuments.