Skyline
Joe Neill
Art for me is something symbolic and as a result what I am trying to represent in this piece may be difficult to understand. To try and explain what I have done it is important to make a comparison with the many images and icons that exist in our daily lives.
The many publicity signs that surround us are there to present the different advantages of a product and to incite us to buy them. This is what I call a concrete action.
The icons used as symbols to announce a public service are less direct in their different references. In this case the symbols used represent, in a simplified, way the sense of the service available, such as the use of a knife and fork to suggest a restaurant or a bed to suggest that a hotel is nearby. These icons leave it up to us to imagine the quality or not of what is being proposed. In the two cases mentioned the images used are not divorced from reality and remain in the boundary of the real.
In a work of art, whether it be abstract of not, there are also signs that indicate the pathways to follow in order to understand the work.
In “Skyline” I wanted to represent my origins. If one looks closely at what is presented, there are numerous signs that help to understand the work such as the forms of factories, houses, railroads and the sky that is the unifying factor that is above everything. The clearest example being at the top of the piece where there is a form that suggests a city, or a “Celestial Jerusalem”, as a friend once described it to me.
This piece is a study in transparency, a concept that is very important to me as it exists in many of my works. This idea permits the environment surrounding the piece to interact with the primary forms that make up the sculpture, thus allowing it to become a focal point for the continually evolving activity surrounding the piece, which is always changing.
Finally, rather than remaining mystified in front of the seeming mystery and strangeness of this piece, I suggest, that by using the symbols presented, the spectator can find the key to enter into a different world, the imaginary one of the artist.
Joe Neill – Mai 2016
More informations
“Qu’est-ce que Urban metaphor, œuvre créée par l’Américain Joe Neill et installée sur un rond-point de Saint-Satur” Le Berry Républicain 29/01/2019
“Chaque semaine, nous retrouvons des personnes qui avaient marqué l’actualité” Le Berry Républicain 26/05/2016
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