AARON T STEPHAN: DOWNPOUR
Aaron T Stephan’s Downpour, a new sculpture commissioned for the campus of Southern New Hampshire University, plays mischief against the steadiness of tradition. Standing about 30 feet tall, Downpour presents three upended buckets of ‘paint’ spilling their primary-colored contents from the apex of the sculpture onto a six-foot granite plinth, the ‘paint’ accumulating on the adjacent ground forming seats for visitors. The goal of the project, as stated in the prospectus, is a “new work that not only welcomes visitors to the main campus of Southern New Hampshire University but also celebrates the vision of the university…and the spirit of coming of age, academic and professional pursuits and the overarching goal to contribute to society.” Stephan’s piece, made of painted aluminum and granite, at first carries the eye upward, in the manner of sculptural monuments that inspire, but Stephan’s elevation is simply the locus for the moment when the prank of the new spills onto the past. The formal architectural plinth is joined into the mess of the pour. Downpour suggests re-enacting Jackson Pollack’s paint pours and even a replay of Roy Lichtenstein’s revision of abstract expressionist painting gestures.
Aaron T Stephan, concept sketch for Downpour, 2014, digital image. Courtesy of the artist.
Stephan employs a risky strategy, overtly referencing art historical content as though swimming in the expressive river of his forebears. The risk is that such work might amount to a trick, the meaning of which may not yield enough. It is necessary to proclaim a difficulty in writing about this project, which is seen only partially completed and seen ‘completed’ only as a small model. Here’s a hunch about the finished work. Because it is such a large and brightly colored object of represented action, it will likely transcend its rascality and lighten up the public space, serving as an inventive platform for engagement with the pleasure of art history as materiality and process.
An accompanying exhibition of Stephan’s work includes works on paper and small sculptures that involve representations of pouring and splattering liquids, expanding more formally on the strategy of Downpour. Stephan’s sculpture is as much behavior as it is object.