Artist's Statement

TEMPIO BRETTON: artist's statement extracted from the catalogue MONUMENTA, 19 th International Sculpture Biennale, Antwerp , Belgium .

Tempio Bretton was created in homage to the celebrated English landscapist Capability Brown for the occasion of an exhibition at Bretton Hall in the Yorkshire Sculpture Park , a park in the style of the great master of English garden design.

The inclusion in the English garden of a temple ruin, or "eye-catcher," was used to draw the eye and mind to a focus in time and space, present the beholder with an immediate relationship to an historic past made new within his or her own surroundings, and create a depth of space never before seen in garden design.

I took the idea of the temple ruin eye-catcher and reduced it to a scale at the point where architecture and sculpture merged. Tempio Bretton is not capacious enough to walk into, yet it is considerably larger than a man.

One view of it presents a knot of golden columns clustered together, topped by a dome shape. The only clue from this side to the temple's non-conformity to historic principle is a sharp notch cut into the square base.

Viewed from the opposite side, the cluster of columns capped by an angular top opens up as if to welcome someone in, yet the mysterious core is still impenetrable. These contradictions articulate a confrontation between past and present, and an exciting truth. The past is always at the heart of our constructions in the present.