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September 1982. Gray granite, steel. Dimensions: 15 × 6 × 5 ft.
Collection: Grounds for Sculpture - Hamilton, NJ
Torque 14 is one of the larger and most physically dramatic works from my tensegrity, or Brute Series. Two large pieces of gray granite are held in a precarious but stable relationship by interlocking forged-steel bars. The weight of the stones places the steel under torque, providing the energy—or “glue”—that locks the sculpture together without welding. The long diagonal stone appears almost to defy gravity, creating a “static energy event”—a sculpture held in arrested motion.
At roughly six feet high and fifteen feet long, Torque 14 brings these ideas to an architectural scale. The rough granite remains essentially as found, while the forged steel channels and makes visible the forces of gravity, tension, leverage, and balance. In this sense, the work is deliberately self-referential—“assemblage about assemblage, sculpture about sculpture”—with the forces holding it together becoming both its structure and its subject. Created in 1982, it stands near the culmination of these early investigations, which reached their largest public expression that same year in Trough in Billings, Montana.
September 1982. Gray granite, steel. Dimensions: 15 × 6 × 5 ft.
Collection: Grounds for Sculpture - Hamilton, NJ
Torque 14 is one of the larger and most physically dramatic works from my tensegrity, or Brute Series. Two large pieces of gray granite are held in a precarious but stable relationship by interlocking forged-steel bars. The weight of the stones places the steel under torque, providing the energy—or “glue”—that locks the sculpture together without welding. The long diagonal stone appears almost to defy gravity, creating a “static energy event”—a sculpture held in arrested motion.
At roughly six feet high and fifteen feet long, Torque 14 brings these ideas to an architectural scale. The rough granite remains essentially as found, while the forged steel channels and makes visible the forces of gravity, tension, leverage, and balance. In this sense, the work is deliberately self-referential—“assemblage about assemblage, sculpture about sculpture”—with the forces holding it together becoming both its structure and its subject. Created in 1982, it stands near the culmination of these early investigations, which reached their largest public expression that same year in Trough in Billings, Montana.
