In "Influenceable", portrait and landscape are re-imagined. The face is composed of mismatched stone cutouts, creating a battered, worn memorial of a person long gone. The sculpture is pierced by various art making devices, injecting paint into the stone. Blue, turquoise, and red drip down the surface, pooling among the cracks and ridges of this unconventional portrait.
Perhaps this is a relic of the artist’s psyche, tortured by the very tools that gave them power in the first place. The cut-out figure lacks agency in comparison to the living figures seen in Bak’s work, as it is subject to the forces of its surrounding environment.
How do outside influences affect the work of the artist? How will the artist be remembered? What role does the artist play within an ever-evolving historical narrative?
Bernard H. Pucker, BAK a Day, March 5, 2023
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Influenceable by whom? And to what end?
Usually when we try to influence someone or some process, we have a mission or goal in mind.
However, given the state of the monumental form why would you bother?
The pipes being extruded by or from the wooden structure do not invite help. They simply and painfully exist.
Is reality of war and devastation beyond influence?
How does one or a people or another nation stop Putin and the horrific assault on the Ukraine.
War can reveal the worst and the best in others. Certainly, the response of neighbors e.g. Poland to the new 6 million refugees has been positive. The cause for their becoming refugees dreadful.
Bak’s work continues to awaken in us the need to speak out and act against war and oppression of others.
Bernard H. Pucker, BAK a Day, May 15, 2022
Vilna Gaon Museum of Jewish History (Samuel Bak Museum)
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