Article: Perfection - Ian Wolter
Perfection - Ian Wolter
7th March - 25th May 2025
In Pursuit of Perfection: Sculpture by Ian Wolter
by Natalie Baerselman le Gros
It would be easy to make assumptions about Ian Wolter’s new works. That, under the exhibition title ‘Perfection’, they present some opinion on body ideals or, in the very least, are mere depictions of the human form in a long history of figurative representation. However, they offer an intentional and considered expression of feeling, a particular emotional exchange with the viewer, that offers insight into the human condition. They allow us to contemplate the inner self, that which makes us who we are, but also operate as a meditation on the wider trials and behaviours of humanity.
Wolter’s newest sculptures, the first body of work made with the pure intention of artistic investigation, rather than in response to a public or personal commission, are offered, equally uncharacteristically, in a less than life-size scale. This allows the viewer to look beyond the biology of the figurative sculpture, preventing any easy bodily or spatial comparison, yet their presentation at eye-level allows one to contemplate emotional space on the same plane, the eyes being, as is said, the window to the soul.
As such, Wolter’s sculptures are not interested in the body physical, nor in the politicisation of its biology or in any binary assumption perhaps suggested by the presence of the naked form. The body, for Wolter, is the vessel and its ubiquity, its familiarity, suggests universality and togetherness, not in body but in personhood. Representation is often discussed in popular artistic culture, to see is to feel represented and perhaps from a biological viewpoint, this is still largely overdue, but emotionally, Wolter suggests that the figure, the body, the representation does not need to mirror to instil feeling, to encourage that emotional engagement. Wolter taps into a universality in the human condition that is far more nuanced, something under the skin.
The exhibition is made up of full and partial figures. Charlotte stands tall, her confident gaze penetrating the viewer. Unlike much sculpture of the female body, she is confrontational and does not conform to the viewer’s gaze. To contemplate her form is to acknowledge her personhood, there is no subtle voyeurism here, the viewer is forced to own their viewership in order to engage with the sculpture. Contrastingly, David is reticent, his downcast eyes juxtapose his open posture, arms spread-eagled, as if offered up for judgement. Wolter’s angels, winged torso forms, demonstrate further Wolter’s disinterest in anatomy and bodily verisimilitude as artistic subject, the biology of such forms being physically impossible. They hint at the otherworldly, to engage beyond the physical body presented to us into the less quantifiable, to consider the unearthly facets of human existence.
The sculptures have a striking surface texture, again, intended not as an authentic visage of the human form. Pitted and scraped, sinews and muscles are loosely suggested through the push and pull of material by the artist’s hands. These sculptures, modelled from life and rendered solid in bronze, begin their life, in fact, in clay and it is the characteristic pliability of the material that has captured and retained the sign of the artist, each a small divot of clay pressed into place and moulded into meaning. Appropriate perhaps, these sculptures beginning in clay, as much as the material plays its role in so many myths and legends surrounding the creation of man. Globally tales are told of the carving of humankind from clay: from the Egyptian god
Khnum creating human children from clay to Prometheus of Ancient Greek mythology, said to have moulded men from earth and water, from the indigenous American’s Earth-Maker who breathed life into figures formed and dried in the sun to the god Obatala of the African Yoruba culture, who likewise, created the human race from clay. Beyond mythology, more recently scientific research has suggested clay may have played a crucial role in the early stages of evolution and the origins of life on this planet. This offers an enjoyable circularity to Wolter’s process and intention, clay being the starting point for the work and the building blocks of humankind, both biologically and spiritually.
There is a certain classicism to Wolter’s sculptures, harking back to the formal development of figurative sculpture from ancient Egypt, Greece and Rome and into the European Renaissance – static upright figures evolve in to relaxed postures, active poses and dynamic storytelling scenes. Many of Wolter’s figures have an almost contrapposto stance, bar David, which lends the sculptures a dynamism. The viewer observes, and often unconsciously mimics, weight shifting towards one foot, the torso tilted sideways, denoting a body finding comfort. In contrast, David’s cruciform pose offers clear reference to religious imagery and compounds the sense of vulnerability and judgement around the figure’s posture and expression. Wolter often renders his sculptures without arms, legs or heads, and so are visually reminiscent of the characteristic limbless sculptures seen in classical museum galleries, appendages lost to time. This focuses the viewer on what’s lost, imagined limbs extending into an unknown space and in turn, lends the sculptures a sense of timelessness and perpetuity, indefinable by date or era.
Wolter uses the visual language of art history: Charlotte’s contrapposto posture much like the Venus de Milo, David’s cruciform pose of Christian and Catholic iconography, the presentation of angels amongst humans, all together evokes an almost renaissance tableau. Wolter harnesses the familiarity of ubiquitous images of historic art, referencing the great continuum of figurative sculpture, and the meaning and interpretation of those images, to facilitate contemplation of the contemporary situation. Inherent is a familiarity and continuity that grounds these works, and the materiality of bronze cements them, providing permanence and gravity of form and meaning. In doing so, Wolter comments on the persistence of humankind, which upon digging deeper is revealed to be a precarious constancy.
Wolter though is no stranger to the vocabulary of art history in contemporary narrative. His public sculpture The Children of Calais, depicts a group of six children. They are dressed in contemporary clothing but one holds a life jacket and thus bares the true circumstance of these children, caught up, as they are, in the refugee crisis affecting not only the UK but people and countries across the globe. The composition of the children directly imitates Auguste Rodin’s sculpture The Burghers of Calais (1884–1889). A prominent sculpture (a copy of which is installed outside the Houses of Parliament) that describes a moment during the Hundred Years’ War and the siege of Calais by the English, when six burghers agreed to surrender themselves to spare the people of the city. Wolter’s portrayal of the refugee children, in the context of The Burghers of Calais, posits them as rhetoric fodder, part of a political agenda with little intention to improve the lives of these children. Wolter’s intention is to provoke debate about the inhuman response to the children caught up in the current refugee crisis. The permanence and prominence of the association with Rodin demonstrates the sincerity and seriousness of the intention behind the Wolter’s messaging. In the continuum of public sculpture: the war memorial, the statue-d celebratory figure, the commemorative monument, all are by definition centrally commissioned and approved to mark a moment or message as official and universal. Wolter utilises this, and his own success as an artist commissioned for many a public sculpture, to suggest a universal outrage that is perhaps not spoken loud enough or heard keenly enough.
The centre piece in the exhibition is Wolter’s Vitruvian. Taking obvious inspiration from Leonardo Da Vinci’s Vitruvian Man drawing of the 15th century, made famous through constant reproduction and adaptation. The renowned drawing attempts to define man in architectural terms, inspired by writings of Roman architect and engineer, Vitruvius, and his theories of universal proportion in the pursuit of balance and harmony. It reduces man down to that which Wolter avoids: a technical exercise examining ratio, scale and averages, disregarding individualism and variety. The drawing acts as an answer to a question, somewhat squaring the circle, to define humankind, but as an answer, little do these technical sketches speak to any sort of inner balance and harmony, let alone societal, or institutional. A careful consideration of which may in fact be more enlightening as to the human condition, a new square for a new circle, telling of what is to be and how it is to exist as a human in the modern world.
Wolter’s Vitruvian features two figures instead of one. They stand back-to-back but glance over the shoulder at one another. The composition is introspective rather than inspective, the focus removed from the anatomy of the body and retrained on the perceived emotional exchange of the characters. The two figures, one male, the other female, one black, one white, goes someway to update or expand that renowned image. To move the composition towards a greater breadth of representation and demonstrate the obvious fallacy of an attempted representation of humankind in a single figure. The composition recalls, as well as Da Vinci’s Vitruvian Man, Anthony Gormley’s Sculpture for Derry Walls (1987) in which two back-to-back cruciform posed figures represent the cultural duality and paradox of an Irish city united and divided by different factions of the same religion. Vitruvian hints at a similar duality of personhood and what could be described as perceived opposition, in race and sex, to define an inherent universal dualism within all of us.
‘Perfection’, for Ian Wolter, embodies an attempt towards a representation of form that will provoke the viewer to consider beyond the visual. To recognise a kinship, not in biology, but in emotional space, to conduct an existential appraisal. ‘Perfection’ is not a target, definable by any scale, but an intention, an effort to be and do better, to contribute to the improvement of humankind for all. To recognise that we are all bound to the universal human condition, to be part of this world.
