JOHN CHAMBERLAIN

During the 1950s, Chamberlain spent a year at Black Mountain College, where the poet Charles Olson was his teacher, and where he experimented with poetry, composing a body of work that would subtly inform his approach to sculptural work. This interlude had a profound impact on the artist—he would later state, ‘My teachers were Kline, de Kooning, Charles Olson.’ Chamberlain would later become known for the creativity and poetry of his titles, which, like his sculptures, were assembled based on ‘fit.’ He wrote words on cards, trying different combinations to create beautiful compositions. In the early 1980s, he gifted his poems from Black Mountain College to the curator and author Julie Sylvester, who was in the process of conducting interviews for a catalogue raisonné of Chamberlain’s works. He had saved them for nearly 30 years, and she recognised in this a sign of their singular importance for him, and the insights they might afford for his work. The pages reveal his working through the images and themes, as well as his and others’ changes and annotations.

In 1980, Chamberlain had moved to Sarasota, mooring his boat, the Cocola, at a local marina. He established an outdoor studio at the back of a junkyard in Osprey, eventually occupying a large former industrial building painted bright yellow, allowing him to make work larger than ever before. The artist soon began work on a monumental sculpture commission, ‘Deliquescence’, made from truck parts. Seeing the remaining truck chassis nestled together in his studio, he was reminded of a fleet of Venetian gondolas, probably also inspired by the proximity of the sea, the vessels in the marina and along the coastline. These hefty parts became the basis of the Armada series. In 1984, Chamberlain changed the series title to the Gondolas, naming each after a notable poet—including Charles Olson, his teacher at Black Mountain College.

By the end of 1984, and in direct contrast to the large scale of the Gondolas, the artist accumulated what he called a ‘Tonka Toy junkyard’ from which he made some of his smallest works. Many of the Tonks, however, share a focus on low, horizontal form with the Gondolas. Seeing these works together demonstrates Chamberlain’s ability to work in a variety of scales—simultaneously creating some of his largest and smallest works. The opportunity to see the Tonks and Gondolas in parallel gives a unique insight into Chamberlain’s Sarasota era, a key period in the artist’s oeuvre.

Organised in close collaboration with the John Chamberlain Estate, the exhibition is curated by Tanya Barson, and will open on 10 May 2023.