Dancers Touch – new creative work in the style of a master

DANCERS TOUCH, 2012
Hanging mobile, sheet steel, solder, wire and paint
115cm wide x 125cm high

An original piece, this kinetic mobile sculpture represents approximately 4 months work which started in 2012 and concluded in early 2013. This is my fifth mobile, second major kinetic work and leverages both my engineering and creative background.

The piece is approximately 4 feet wide, 4 feet high, and is constructed of steel, solder, high tensile wire and hand painted to achieve the final result.

Dancers Touch is my latest effort to explore the field of mobiles, taking the Calder style of mobile which is largely abstract, and applying similar principles but to generate a representational work. That is, the two dancers in my work are clearly identifiable in their abstract form.

After 18 months researching artists who create mobiles (Calder, Laurent Davidson, Marco Mahler, Bruce Gray, Julie Frith, Timothy Rose, Jade Oakley, etc), I have not found a single image of a mobile similar to Dancers Touch. Most Calder style mobiles are complete abstract works, and I can attest to the complexity of creating a distinguishable form. Perform a Google image search yourself for “kinetic mobile sculpture” and observe the abstract nature of the images returned.

So today you be the judge, I hope you see the works origins, and something new at the same time…

Grace, beauty, elegant complexity – mobiles that capture the human form in motion.

Form and motion, people and movement, that’s what inspires me. Steel, high tensile wire, solder, paint, these are my materials.

My mobiles are constructed in a traditional fashion, with single lengths of hand bent wire interlocking to create complex structures. However I’ve opted for sheet steel over lighter materials and prefer my own rather involved soldering technique to join sheet steel to wire (instead of crimping or rivets) which permits one face of the sheet steel to remain pure, clean and clear of holes or protruding wire.

I’m intrigued by movement, how a form when it moves is struck differently by light. Form and movement combine in unexpected ways to create unique moments in time. For more than 10 years I’ve captured movement with photography, now it is with my mobiles.

I’m constantly surprised when I put mobiles together by their diverse and sometimes unexpected range of movements. I also have a better appreciation of the “butterfly effect”, where a small change in one part of a complex system can have a massive effect somewhere else. Remove even the smallest piece from a mobile and you will witness the cascading collapse of the structure faster than you would believe possible.

The creative process and problem solving are two aspects I enjoy immensely when creating a mobile, and ultimately the technical and creative find harmony in each completed work. That’s once I overcome an internal conflict, the engineer in me striving for perfection, while the artist realising it is the imperfections that make people and art interesting.

Mobiles have an inexplicable effect, at least for me personally. I’ll happily spend as much time watching my mobiles as I do watching television. There is just something mesmerising about them.

I hope my work inspires others to explore this medium, just as I have been inspired by the mobile’s grace, beauty and effortless defiance of gravity.

John Wiese