Joseph Buckley

This class will explore the potential of figuration within contemporary sculptural practice. What can we achieve by incorporating a humanoid figure into our sculptural works? How far can the human form be pushed while remaining legible? Who controls and is invested in this legibility? What do histories of figuration have in common with objectification and dehumanization? And can we extract utility, today, from these dynamics? Alongside material demonstrations, lectures, readings, and critiques, we will investigate unpopular media in order to explore the work of contemporary artists alongside ideas and genres such as the uncanny valley, hHorror, science fiction, and more.

This class will explore various methods and techniques for sculptural moldmaking, ranging from the traditional to the experimental. Alongside the technical development of skills and workflows, there will be a series of lectures, readings, and discussions wherein we tease out the conceptual, poetic, and psychic implications and potential of moldmaking in a radical and expanded sense. What does the mold represent as an object? Is it a tool or a work unto itself? How far can we stretch the definition of moldmaking? How widely can we apply its processes?

Taking the planning and design of an exhibition as its conceptual departure point, this class will come together to consider the role that sculpture might play in the near to long-term future. What do we, as artists, owe to a changing world? How will the structures in which we have invested change? What can we do to prepare? Working through contemporary, historical, speculative, and fantastic examples, we will explore and negotiate the roles, risks, and responsibilities of artmaking in a world that lurches endlessly and unrecognizably, with ever greater speed, from one extreme crisis to the next.