Process Art (Dead Men Don't Make Sculpture)

Nathan Mabry, Process Art (Dead Men Don't Make Sculpture), 2008, bronze, 87 x 58 x 41in. (221 x 147.3 x 104.1cm), Joint purchase in part with funds provided by Murray Gribin, Hammer Museum, Los Angeles and the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego
Nathan Mabry's work often fuses references to classic modern art and the art of tribal and ancient civilizations of the Americas. In this sculpture, Mabry purchased an unauthorized cast of Rodin's sculpture, The Thinker, through the Internet, removed its patina, and then repatinated it and overlaid the sculpture with a bronze cast of an altered latex mask. Large in scale, the sculpture is both unsettling and humorous, irreverent and yet carefully wrought and conceptually complex.
