eyehand: selected sculpture from 1975 - 2011
A lot of my early work started off nominally geometric and constructed,
but I would sneak in a reference to the body without depicting the body,
which was a way of creating a kind of subversive connection. Desire,
memory, humor, even wistfulness are powerful psychic qualities that
I do not avoid. I wanted to enter the work directly and have its narrative
understood as much in the body as the mind.
-- Peter Shelton
eyehand demonstrates the evolution of Shelton’s development as an artist of international stature. Early works include flattop, 1975, and cheesestick, 1977, that Shelton created while at UCLA, as well as a selected group of forms from his 1979 MFA thesis exhibition, SWEATHOUSEandlittleprincipals. Major bodies of work are represented, such as Shelton’s waxworks sculptures, previously exhibited at the Des Moines Center, Iowa and the La Jolla Museum of Contemporary Art (now the San Diego Museum of Art) in 1989; bronze sculptures that featured water elements in thingsgetwet, presented at LACMA in 1994; godspipes that were first seen at the Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin in 1998; and works relating to cloudsandclunkers, Shelton’s 2004-2005 commission for the SeaTac Airport, Seattle, Washington. eyehand also debuts Shelton’s most recent sculptures, including a gold-leafed torus form, entitled fatangel, 2011.