Horns of a Dilemma, 2015, Simeon Nelson
Cor-ten steel, 326 x 90 x 100cm
Provenance: Artmarketspace, Melbourne
Exhibited: ‘Interlocutor’ 10-13 September 2015, Sydney Contemporary Art Fair; 26th November – 20th December 2015, Mossgreen Gallery, Melbourne
Simeon Nelson is a sculptor, new media and interdisciplinary artist interested in convergences between science, religion and art, complexity theory and relationships between art, architecture urban sites and the natural world.
After establishing himself as an artist in Australia and Asia in the 1990s, he moved to London in 2001 and is currently working on projects in Africa, Australia, Europe and the UK. He was a Finalist in the National Gallery of Australia’s National Sculpture Prize in 2005 and a Finalist in the 2003 Jerwood Sculpture Prize. Passages, a monograph on his work was published by The University of New South Wales Press, Sydney in 2000. He is currently professor of sculpture at the University of Hertfordshire, United Kingdom (1).
Artist Statement
Horns of a Dilemma was produced as part of Nelson’s 2015 Interlocutor series.
These sculptures emerged out of a studio process of making numerous maquettes and variations on the theme and from them generating CAD patterns which were cut from steel plate and fabricated by myself and a team at the Fasham factory in Melbourne.
Each sculpture in this exhibition is an interlocutor in the dialogue between what it might mean to be a separate entity or an element of a wider system. Each is also is an interlocutor in the dialogue between what it might mean to be masculine and what it might mean to be feminine. Each sculpture asks how does an entity distinguish itself, how does it stand out from its context.
Horns of the Dilemma rises from the floor in two Fibonacci curves. Each iteration of its form becomes closer to the vertical and closer to the golden mean without ever attaining either, as to do so would require an infinite number of iterations. Its parts meld into each other. The peaks could be seen as concrescent becomings, or heightened occasions of experience. Horns of the Dilemma contains its context within itself; it exists not as a thing, not as an entity separable from its context. It could be interpreted in the light of the saying attributed to Polish alchemist Sendivogius – Maior autem animae pars extra corpus est (the major part of the soul is outside the body) (2).