Wednesday 22 December 2010

Bite 21: Steve Woodward - Step Touch Stone, 2009

Step Touch Stone, 2009, granite
A solid, dignified, upright sculpture, sitting among skyscrapers, suggesting momentum - simultaneously upward and downward - Step Touch Stone is an efficiently minimalist work alluding to a raft of complex ideas and paradoxes.

Consisting of twin inverted staircases standing in St. Patrick's Square next to the Catholic Cathedral the work is successfully spiritual in its associations while remaining open, interpretable under many cultures and belief systems, least of all being Buddhism.

The staircases combine in tension: Yin, yang. Light, dark. Hope, despair. The work remains both grounded and transcendent, solid and ephemeral.

It is a open reflexive object, encouraging silent meditation on the human condition.

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