Sept 15, 2010: Exposure

[xoxoxoBruce]

When ever we in the US do large public space art, it usually gets planned to death, with input from everybody and his brother. We wouldn't want to offend anyone.
Across the pond they seem to erect much larger pieces, with less input. So it's done, or at least too far along to change, before most of the public gets a gander at it.

Anthony Gormley’s latest mammoth sculpture, Exposure which is to be unveiled formally in September, has opinion divided. Nothing particularly new there, you might say. Yet Exposure, weighing in at sixty tonnes, twenty six meters (85 feet) in height and poised rather delicately in a crouching position is causing something of a ruckus in the Netherlands, where it has been assembled.

Well I know what it looks like to me.

It is customary, these days, to nickname any new gargantuan work of art and this has certainly been the case with Exposure. One rather unimpressed resident of the nearby town of Lelystad quickly christened Exposure as de poepende man and the name has caught on. It doesn’t even loosely translate as sitting, but if you put an h after the first consonant you get the picture. The rather more polite element of Dutch society uses the word hurkende – which means crouching. Either way, there is no doubt whether or not the locals have formed an idea about which specific function our latest friendly giant is performing.

Guess I'm not the only one that knows squat.

link