Carol Bove
b. 1971, New York City
Flora's Garden II, 2012
Brass, concrete, steel, aluminum, and painted medium-density fiberboard
In Second Cartesian Sculpture, a suspended metal grid interrupts the architectural space, dividing it into two fields that the viewer must navigate. At the same time it acts as a "viewfinder" of sorts that frames the surroundings. An abstract system that organizes space through perpendicular axes, the Cartesian grid has long symbolized rational order and analytical distance. Developed in the seventeenth century by the philosopher René Descartes, it has shaped modern ways of imagining the world, reinforcing a split between mind and body. Bove has challenged this separation in her work, cultivating forms of awareness that are at once cerebral, sensorial, and emotional. Although constructed in the form of a geometric grid, Bove's structure droops slightly and clusters on the ground, its rigid logic infiltrated by a sense of fluidity and ease.
