Long, Charles
b. 1958 - Long Branch, NJ) is a sculptor who uses a vocabulary of abstract forms to elicit empathy between the viewer and his artwork. Long states, "I build tension into my work through the repression of two things: language and the explicit representation of the body; I like to keep them contained within the forms." While his blobs are not identifiable they have an engaging presence. In this project, his blobs are subjected to the same gravitational effects that we are. Long feels that this gives his abstract reality a foothold, albeit a vulnerable one, in the real world where support and the lack thereof tell a story of life with its ups and downs. Although Long's artistic output is quite varied, the shelf project has been a developing body of work since his 1996 exhibition titled "Our Bodies, Our Shelves" This project, commissioned by Progressive in 1999, is his largest to date and was created specifically for this space. Its title, "Hold on Hope" is borrowed from a song of the same name by the Ohio based post punk band Guided By Voices. The song, from the CD "Do the Collapse," is filled with fragments of mysterious images and conjures up a sense of holding on in spite of life's unpredictability, be it the disappointment of loss, the turbulence of success or its periods of barrenness. Long views the structure of his installation as an abstract narrative that unfolds with chapters relating to these themes. Long sees the basic shelf with blob as an ideogram of the self in which the brackets holding onto the wall are the feet and legs while the mantle with it's extensions is the body and arms. The blob of this shelf/self construction might be seen alternately as the desiring mind or the searching soul. It can sit squarely on the shoulders of the self/shelf or lend itself out to other supporting selves/shelves and risk dependency, neglect and abandonment. Even the shelves themselves have their moments of redundancy, failure and endurance. If this piece has a center, it would be the profusion of red and yellow blobs that follow a passage of barren blue green shelves, perhaps an example of the fickleness of fate. Long describes this pendulous cluster which drapes down into the viewer's space as the "animal mother," one of the image fragments taken from the song, "Hold on Hope." The supple silicone rubber in which these forms are cast, is a "food grade" silicone rubber, the same kind used for baby bottle nipples and silicone implants. It's flexibility lends a childlike playfulness as well as a sensuousness that are further echoed by the soft shapes which evoke both male and female anatomy. At either end of the installation, Long has punctuated the whole piece with blobs which have separated from the whole. They have taken on autonomy and rest on the architecture of the building suggesting quotation marks or perhaps births and deaths. Another distinct feature might be the spooning blob couple in the center of the short wall, which is the only place in the work where two blobs meet and rest for a second. While Long has offered many interpretations of the artwork's features, he contends that they are not the only interpretations and encourages the viewer to be imaginative. His reluctance to have the last word is evident in his borrowing the title from another artist. Through material and form alone, he hopes to jostle the life stories of our unconscious and to exploit our freedom to endlessly interpret them. His efforts in repressing language in the production of the work perhaps presents an opportunity for the viewers to do the talking. Long received a BFA from the Philadelphia College of Art, PA, in 1981. He participated in the Whitney Independent Study Program, NY, in 1981, and he received a Masters in Fine Arts from Yale University, CT, in 1988. Long is the recipient of several grants including the Pollock-Krasner Foundation Grant, the Guggenheim Fellowship, the National Endowment for the Arts and the Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation Grant. He currently teaches in the Sculpture Department at Harvard University in Cambridge, MA. Long has exhibited his work in the United States as well as France, Italy, Belgium and Brazil. 2000.053