May 2020. Bronze, river stone. Dimensions: 9.5 × 20 × 8 in (24 × 51 × 20 cm).
In this series, Van Alstine expands his commentary on the 2020–2021 Covid crisis by incorporating the words of Martin Luther King Jr. into several Sisyphean works, stamping them directly into the bronze. In paraphrasing King’s well-known observation that “the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice,” Van Alstine reframes the idea for the present moment, suggesting instead that the arc of Covid bends toward science.
Through these works he reflects his concern that elements within the MAGA movement show a deep disregard for scientific understanding. The sculptures point to what he sees as the troubling absurdity of rejecting science—an attitude that effectively erases the long trajectory of rational thought and the scientific revolution that, over centuries, replaced superstition and myth as the dominant intellectual foundation of Western civilization.
May 2020. Bronze, river stone. Dimensions: 9.5 × 20 × 8 in (24 × 51 × 20 cm).
In this series, Van Alstine expands his commentary on the 2020–2021 Covid crisis by incorporating the words of Martin Luther King Jr. into several Sisyphean works, stamping them directly into the bronze. In paraphrasing King’s well-known observation that “the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice,” Van Alstine reframes the idea for the present moment, suggesting instead that the arc of Covid bends toward science.
Through these works he reflects his concern that elements within the MAGA movement show a deep disregard for scientific understanding. The sculptures point to what he sees as the troubling absurdity of rejecting science—an attitude that effectively erases the long trajectory of rational thought and the scientific revolution that, over centuries, replaced superstition and myth as the dominant intellectual foundation of Western civilization.
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