Three men, scaling Maya House on Borough High Street. They catch my eye each morning that I walk past. They are the creation of Israeli artist Ofra Zimbalista, a work called 'Walls and Trumpets.I looked up the artists website for some details (http://www.ofra-zimbalista.co.il/default.asp). The life-sized figures are developed by a casting technique the artist uses that is based on real subjects. Much of her work involves this technique, and I've found some of her projects quite erie, like alien forms frozen in time. This strikes me, as they are formed on human casts - but without the physiognomic details, the facial features in particular, they become an abstraction and are depersonified.
I have read a few reviews and it seems the colour blue is intended to be somber, morbid or mournful. The colour blue, deep and uniform, might also have been used to represent the anonymity of the figures - having no native or ethnic idendity - they could be anybody. But in my eyes, at least for this setting, it enlivens the figures, making them appear bright, lively against the bluest sky...or the more often grey overhead. The artist has been known to use Yves Klein blinding blue - a colour he made his own - in something of a protest against his effort to appropriate the colour, as colour should belong to everyone.
(A good point. How do you go about patenting a colour?)
I read on about here work. Words that come to mind are circusesque, spiritual and feminist, non-physiognomic. She tends to depict women in emotive poses whereas men are more often engaged in acrobatics, music and climbing. Her work is described as merging the comic and the serious. Here, the lowest and middle figure appear to grapple with the task, the first looking downward as if to determine where to grip next, and I believe holding a trumpet as well. The second is looking upward, eliciting a sense he is nearing the summit. The topmost figure is suspended, facing forward and playing the drum.
There is a sort of continuum to the poses - I wonder if they are meant to represent a single individual progressing upward over time or a group of three on their course. I stopped and had a think about this, then continued along my own path...
