Untitled 1960

John Chamberlain put this sculpture together from painted metal at some point in his career, and it's an exciting, compact explosion of color and form. The physicality of the medium is front and center: you can see how he's bent, crushed, and welded these pieces together. The surfaces are glossy and bright, but also show signs of wear and tear, like the remnants of a collision. My eye keeps going back to the way he uses color; that one red piece near the top really pops. It seems like there is an almost casual way of arranging the different colours, with different sheens and gradients, like they were found this way. Chamberlain's work reminds me a bit of the Dada artists, especially Kurt Schwitters, who assembled sculptures from found objects. But where Schwitters was often whimsical, Chamberlain is more aggressive, raw, and in your face. It shows art is not just about pretty pictures, but about embracing messiness, ambiguity, and the sheer joy of making.