Untitled 1960

John Chamberlain made this sculpture from crushed car parts. It’s an explosion of color and form, like a metal flower blooming from a dark base. I imagine Chamberlain in his studio, wrestling with these scraps, bending metal with his hands, choosing each piece with an intuitive sense of color and shape. What's he thinking as he’s welding these shards together? Maybe it's about destruction, the violence of car crashes. Or maybe it’s about resurrection, transforming trash into something beautiful and new. Look at that red piece, jutting out like a defiant shout. And the way the light catches the curves, creating shadows and highlights. It reminds me of de Kooning, or even more so, Senga Nengudi’s soft sculptures. Artists are always in conversation, even across mediums. Chamberlain takes the gestures of painting and makes them solid, sculptural. It’s a wild dance, a celebration of the unpredictable, and, really, a conversation about time, memory, and transformation.