Piquanthearing 2010

John Chamberlain made this sculpture, Piquanthearing, from crushed auto bodies. It’s like a 3D painting, all process and physicality, and its colourful surfaces seem to hint at an understanding of artmaking as a process. He takes these mangled forms and coaxes them into something new. The texture is all dents and folds, a kind of controlled chaos. Look at that burst of red, green and purple; it’s pure energy, almost like he’s captured a moment of impact and frozen it in time. The way the light bounces off the chrome is pretty special. Chamberlain's work reminds me a little bit of David Smith’s Cubi sculptures, but with more aggressive energy. It’s this constant conversation and exchange of ideas across time. In the end, with art, it’s not about one fixed meaning, but about embracing the beautiful mess of interpretation.