 "Walking to the Sky," a new sculpture by Jonathan Borofsky, is located in front of the Kiturami Homsys Co. building, Hwagok-dong, Gangseo-gu, Seoul. / Yonhap |
Staff Reporter
American artist Jonathan Borofsky's ``Hammering Man,'' a giant sculpture of a worker ceaselessly hammering away, has become a well-known landmark in Gwanghwamun in downtown Seoul.
Borofsky was back in Seoul to unveil a new sculpture ``Walking to the Sky,'' located in front of the Kiturami Homsys Co. building, Hwagok-dong, Gangseo-gu, that is expected to be another landmark. The sculpture features a row of seven life-sized people walking on a pole jutting into the sky, as three people look on from the ground.
``It's a symbol of all of humanity. All of us are connected together and walking to an unknown future,'' he said in a press conference Wednesday.
As a child, Borofsky was fascinated by the philosophical title of a Paul Gauguin painting, ``Where Do We Come From? What Are We? Where Are We Going?''
 Jonathan Borofsky |
In 1992, Borofsky made his first sculpture, ``Man Walking to the Sky,'' for the Documenta art show in Kassel, Germany, where it can still be found today. The man is actually a clay sculpture patterned after Borofsky himself. Later, the city of Strasbourg, France also commissioned him to do a similar piece, but this time it was ``Woman Walking to the Sky.''
``I had this very romantic idea that possibly I can locate `Man Walking to the Sky' in Kassel, and `Woman Walking to the Sky' in Strasbourg from another direction, and then we can get the trajectory to meet. But the cities wanted to place it where they wanted to,'' he said, with a chuckle.
A decade later Borofsky expanded his original idea, creating ``Walking to the Sky'' for a temporary installation at the Rockefeller Center in New York. ``Instead of a man or a woman, I decided to make it humanity, all of us together walking up to the sky,'' he said.
The original piece can now be found at the Nasher Collection in Dallas, Texas. He also created another one for his alma mater, Carnegie-Mellon University in Pittsburgh, Penn.
The sculpture in Seoul features people of different ages and ethnicities, including three Asian people. The pole is angled at 75 degrees, because ``the idea is to walk to the sky, not to the building across the street,'' Borofsky joked.
Borofsky said ``Walking to the Sky'' may have also been inspired by a childhood story his father told him about going up to the sky and talking to the friendly giants. ``As I was making the first sculpture in Germany, I certainly flashed back to that story and it gave me an understanding of where parts of the sculpture came from. But the spirituality that was encompassed in the relationship with my father in that story is all in my work,'' he said.
Well-known around the world for his large-scale public sculptures such as the ``Hammering Man,'' Borofsky admitted feeling ``uncomfortable'' when seeing his old works because he always sees something that could have been done differently.
Always the optimist, Borofsky admitted there are always challenges to this every day, whether it's the news about war or personal problems.
``How to maintain your personal energy to go forward is sometimes difficult but I don't see any reason to put my personal unhappiness in a public sculpture. In general, I'm quite happy to be alive. It is quite an amazing thing. We should all be reminded of that in the face of the struggles that we face,'' he said.
Borofsky is also holding a solo exhibition of his small-scale works including ``Human Structures'' and ``Human Structures and the Light of Consciousness,'' at the Pyo Gallery, Itaewon. It runs through Dec. 31. Visit www.pyoart.com or call (02) 543-7337.
cathy@koreatimes.co.kr
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