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Clockwise from top left: Portable
Bridge, 1983. Welded steel and wood, 3 x 4 x 22 ft. View of work installed
at the Ben Franklin Bridge in Philadelphia. Interactive view of (left) Scarab,
1979, welded steel and rubber, 42 x 21 x 60 in.; and Cloister, 1979, welded
steel and rubber, 50 x 25 x 50 in. Procession (detail), 1989. Welded steel,
13 x 14 x 192 in. |
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or
are there other implications as well? Some of the works display the closeness
of a body-casing, and in those instances, readings alternate between shelters,
prisons, and something in between. Her fetal-shaped "Cradle,"
for instance, can become a womb-like surrounding for anyone inside; but
from outside, its fitted metal grille is severe and constraining, like a
coop for solitary confinement. Similarly, two of her small vehicular 'cages,'
"Scarab" and "Cloister" elicit fascination from individuals
entering them; but from an external viewpoint, they evoke pillories, locking
their inhabitants into odd and uncomfortable positions. It is this ambiguous
attitude toward the body that lends the work its edginess - and suggests
unsettling possibilities in the relationship of enclosure to enclosed.
In other works, the intensive interaction of mechanical structure and living
entity yields a fantastic blend of
biological attributes with geometric/architectural ones. It is as if even
inanimate objects possess a sense of being. A case in point is her "Portable
Bridge," - a striking, almost needle-nosed framework with wheels. It
bears a certain resemblance to a battering ram or a peasant's cart, and
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might
easily project a wooden and thing-like insensibility. Yet in actuality,
it has the kind of directed purpose that suggests self-determination. Radiating
the aura of a loyal ally, it is decidedly more partner than tool. Another
aspect of Brandt's anthropomorphism is the quality of movement in her work.
"Bridge Variation," for example, is a flowing succession of suspended
forms, evolving in gradual steps of dimension and orientation. Their effect
of frame-by-frame transition has a stop-action quality; like film stills
illustrating body kinetics, their shifts convey advancing stages of rhythmic
flexion and extension. In that sense they serve as counterpart to her earlier
figural work, "Procession," where a linear arrangement of stickmen
tumbles in sequential pose. Through their progressive series of stances,
its wiry characters generate a model of unfolding action. Yet beyond their
embodiment of movement, they propose an anatomical functionalism, whereby
bodily surfaces become chair-backs and extremities shrink down to support
posts. Somewhere between eccentric acrobats and rebellious furniture, they
posses a sense of whimsy that balances their formal logic. These junctures
of the animate and the mechanical suggest a utopian cosmos- where construction
and biology unite against the shortfalls of a mundane world. Here object
can acquire the vitality of living things, and creatures |
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gain the structural
integrity of engineering.
In this work, we
have seen evidence of a marvelous mechanics that allows the body to go
beyond its accustomed limits. From exchanging traits with objects, to
being shielded within them (despite their constraints), the human form
becomes revitalized and empowered by a reinvention of its bodily defenses.
Perhaps the most ingenious metamorphosis here involves the definition
of forms by linear tubing, where distinct and volumetric presences are
generated through a kind of three-dimensional drawing. As such, the body
becomes conceptualized and enters yet another shelter - the incorporeal,
and thus invulnerable, sphere of ideation. Through this ultimate strategy
for indestructibility, biology is shifted from the physical world to the
level of mental constructs, as ephemeral flesh acquires the abstract constancy
of line and contour. This is sculptural form driven by philosophical vision-
where the body becomes immune to injury and loss, as art recasts life
according to its own image.
*Unedited version
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