ART:
Conrad Shawcross:
The Nervous System (Inverted), 2010. Organized and presented by the Pace Gallery, installed at the Sculpture Garden, 590 Madison Avenue New York Thru July 10, 2010.
For the glassed-in sculpture garden at 590 Madison Avenue, Conrad Shawcross has created a fragile-looking 50-foot-tall clockwork out of bobbins, complex metal armatures, and gears. The Nervous System (Inverted) weaves an infernal allegory: Moving and turning, it slowly produces a thick rope that piles up on the floor. It’s a work about the impossibility of perfection and the importance of mutation—but also the fact that it’s doomed to simply repeat itself without changing. By the show’s end, there will be a pile of around 1,700 feet of this magical lesson in the importance of variation. NYMAG
