Piquanthearing 2010

John Chamberlain made this sculpture, Piquanthearing, from crushed automobile parts. Imagine him in his studio, wrestling with these heavy, discarded materials. He must have really enjoyed the physicality of it all! The surfaces are buckled and torn, exposing layers of vibrant color beneath the metallic skin. There's a kind of aggression to it but also a weird tenderness in how he coaxes these mangled forms into something new. It’s as if he's saying, "Even in destruction, there's beauty." I think about artists like Picasso and his collages – they took scraps of everyday life and turned them into art. Chamberlain does something similar, transforming industrial waste into something strangely elegant and powerful. He’s having a conversation with them, with us, with the world. And that's what art's all about, right? An ongoing dialogue across time, inspiring new ways of seeing and feeling.