The Size Of A Will
2013
dimensions variable
graphite pencil, legal size paper, marble, stone, cinder bricks, plaster, gauze
The Size Of A Will is a minimalist conceptual work, deceptively obsessive, functioning as both drawing and sculpture, participatory and stationary, literal and figurative, poetic and rational. The work is a formal interpretation of the scale and quantity of paper used for drafting legal papers, particularly a last will and testament, death and estate related documents. Investigating themes of ethical reasoning and practical structures within law versus the reality of humanity’s notions of loss and the complexities of mourning—the sculpture examines the dualities contained within its materiality. An ambiguous memorial consisting of a totem like stacks of legal sized paper precisely placed, each sheets edges are entirely coated with graphite pencil—the idea of erasure (mortality) always evident. The page itself is left blank—removing legal jargon, emphasis on the monetary and the focus of thingness and replacing it with a space for contemplation and memory itself. The stack sits upon a marble slab alternating with cinder bricks referencing traditional memorial headstones and entombment as well as the law firm conference table. The cinder bricks are sandwiched with plaster and gauze, rather than mortar, referencing more empathetic medicinal material. Stones work as desk paperweights referencing offerings left at burial sites. The overall totem structure serves its purpose for ancestral immortalization.
Appropriating the late Cuban-American artist Felix Gonzalez-Torres’s acts of generosity—viewers are invited to carefully take a (drawing) sheet of paper from the stack (sculpture). The overall size of The Size Of A Will diminishes over time through the viewer’s participation. With this action, the “will” gains a new interpretation—the recipients become anyone who desires to take an empty page.