Inner City

Arnie Zimmerman, Sculptor | Tiago Montepegado, Architect

Museum of Art, Rhode Island School of Design

September 26, 2009 – January 3, 2010

Judith Tannenbaum, Curator

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3

5 Foreword

7 Introduction

12 Interviews

24 Inner City 2009 Museum of Art, Rhode Island School of Design, Providence

30 Inner City 2008 Keramiekmuseum Princessehof, Leeuwarden, the Netherlands

34 Inner City 2007 Museu da Electricidade, Lisbon, Portugal

38 Biographies

44 Credits

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Watching the transformation of the Chace Center

Gallery into a city of bridges, factories, smokestacks,

laborers, and abstracted but humanized architectural

forms has been a magical experience. Architect

Tiago Montepegado and ceramist Arnie Zimmerman,

creators of Inner City, built from the elegant simplicity

of Rafael Moneo’s architecture to impart the energy

and gritty vitality of the urban environment, leading

us up ramps and through a grid of “streets” toward

a window onto our own beautiful city. The artists

have ensured that the creative process of installation

continues as a process of discovery for visitors,

especially once they begin to take notice of the darkly

whimsical figures. These tiny workers, sentenced to

labor as cogs in the great building machine, have

become malicious and destructive souls. They brawl,

fall down chimneys, carry heavy beams Sisyphus-like

to nowhere, lounge on the job, and shuffle in chains as

inmates. This grim view of the next phase of urban life

raises timely questions as we ponder how to free the

city from overdependence on fossil fuels and the social

stratification caused by economic downturn.

Zimmerman joins a small but distinguished roster

of ceramic sculptors whose work has been highlighted

at the Museum in recent years. Peter Voulkos, Ken

Price, Robert Arneson, and Betty Woodman each

found new expressive possibilities for the medium from

entirely different impulses. Zimmerman brings us a

hand-made realism that is not only approachable and

Foreword

Ann S. Woolsey, Interim Director

appealing but expressive and powerful. His work with

Montepegado took form previously at the Museu da

Electricidade for the Lisbon Architecture Triennial

(organized by Ana Viegas, Galeria Ratton, Lisbon) and

at the Keramiekmuseum Princessehof, Leeuwarden.

We are truly grateful for the support provided to

Inner City by the Providence Tourism Council, Friends

of Contemporary Ceramics (led by Linda Schlenger),

Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation, and the Ministry

of Culture/Directorate-General for the Arts, Portugal.

The artists have been magnificent collaborators,

not only with each other but with the Museum staff

in creating this unique exhibition for RISD, especially

Tara Emsley, registrar; Zeljka Himbele, curatorial

assistant; Derek Schusterbauer, graphic designer;

and the Museum’s manager of installation, Stephen

Wing, and his team: Laura Ostrander, Michael Owen,

and Brian McNamara. Hope Alswang, former RISD

Museum director; Suzanne Fortier, director of develop-

ment; and Matthew Montgomery, director of marketing

and communications, were instrumental in securing

funding. Judith Tannenbaum, Richard Brown Baker

curator of contemporary art, oversaw the entire project,

from its inception to this informative publication.

Many thanks to her for her extra ordinary vision and

persistence in shaping this exhibition. And finally,

we are indebted to the artists, Arnie Zimmerman and

Tiago Montepegado, for creating an indelible image

of the city in the Chace Center Gallery.

Inner City 2009Museum of Art, Rhode Island School of Design

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Inner City is an epic narrative of urban growth, decay, change, and life itself, told in clay by Arnie Zimmerman (American, b. 1954). Currently comprised of nearly 200 figurative and architectural glazed stoneware parts, the installation’s over-all scale and form are variable — adapted to the exhibition site by architect Tiago Montepegado (Portuguese, b. 1970). No matter how they are assembled, Inner City’s diminutive tenements, skyscrapers, scaffolding, and construction-worker figures evoke a playful, mythical world. A closer look, however, reveals signs of something amiss, as workers brawl or tumble down I-beam shafts and dumpsters overflow. Indeed, Zimmer-man’s vision is an ominous one, a cautionary tale about urban corporatization, gentrification, and our waning connection to history in general and in the everyday. Zimmerman has lived and worked in New York City for more than 25 years, observing its streetscape with a mix of awe and regret as it has changed into a different environment — something he says is “more civil and benign, more bland and

Introduction

Judith Tannenbaum, Richard Brown Baker Curator of Contemporary Art

Inner City 2008Keramiekmuseum Princessehof, Leeuwarden

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corporate.” This profound transformation of neighborhoods and their architecture is not limited to New York or to the turn of the millennium. Buildings have been continually razed and buried in the process of creating more modern cities and new cultural landscapes; however, the global building boom of the past decade or so seems to have transformed the urban way of life everywhere and at once. That this boom has now gone bust — or at least has been put on hold — amid the current worldwide economic downturn puts another twist in Zimmer-man’s civic allegory. When, a viewer of Inner City might ask, will all of this “progress” end? Like the densely populated paintings of Pieter Bruegel the Elder (Flemish, ca. 1525–69), Inner City illustrates myriad details of daily life. It also suggests the glory and the suffer-ing of manual labor and perhaps provides a metaphor for the heroism or folly of craftsmanship and creation itself. Zimmer-man’s figures represent working-class characters toiling with-out modern technology. There is something timeless about them, something that poses the eternal question: Are we des-tined to be doomed to endless Sisyphean tasks, or is there such a thing as decisive achievement and evolution? In this, Zimmerman’s work shares a lineage with paintings as diverse as those of Hieronymus Bosch (Dutch, ca. 1450–1516), with their bleak portrayal of human foibles, to Thomas Hart Benton (American, 1889–1975), with whom he shares a distinctively sinewy sculptural style, and WPA artists and photographers of the New Deal, a policy that aimed to lift the United States out

Inner City 2007Museu da Electricidade, Lisbon

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of the Depression and rebuild it. That all of this is rendered in clay — a medium as durably eternal as it is fragile — makes Inner City all the more poignant as a symbol of the ever-present and ever-changing city, whose very existence shifts with its physical infrastructure, social evolution, and economic forces. The RISD Museum, the first venue for Inner City in the United States, is presenting the largest version of the project to date. In 2007, it was shown at the Museu da Electricidade, housed in a former power station, as part of the Lisbon Archi-tecture Triennial. In 2008, it was shown at the Princessehof Museum, Leeuwarden, the Netherlands. Each installation was unique and responsive to its site. In Lisbon, Montepegado built interior walls and pedestals out of concrete blocks, a material and form that responded to the vast industrial building that houses the Electricity Museum. In the Netherlands, scaffold-ing and walkways suggested a typical construction site (the sculptural objects were arranged at angles to each other, in an orthogonal grid), dramatically transforming the neutral white cube of the museum gallery. In both previous iterations, which consisted of approximately 120 components, Montepegado’s prosaic materials and architectural plans emphasized the interplay between the magnitude of the gallery space and the compactness of the sculptural components. The modes of dis-play enhanced the spatial experience of the ceramic sculpture, inviting viewers to move through it as if through a real city, capturing its narrative from a variety of perspectives and thus illuminating its metaphoric power.

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Arnie Zimmermanwith Judith Tannenbaum

JT: You became known in the 1980s for very large

carved vessels. Can you talk a little about that

work and how you switched to smaller figurative

pieces, which you have continued to develop

to the present?

AZ: Large ceramic pots and container forms always

interested me as a student, and I tended to make

oversized pottery. This is a problem when your stated

goal is to make functional and utilitarian pots. When

I was in college, I spent a few summers carving

monumental blocks of limestone in the south of

France. In grad school and afterwards, I began to

combine these two ways of working. I built very large

thick-walled hollow pottery forms. When the clay

became leather hard, I carved the surface, giving it

the appearance of worked stone. With this work I took

a path away from wheel-thrown functional pottery

to sculpture. I chose to keep with me a visual vocab-

ulary and craft-based working method using clay and

firing. The large forms always had architectural and

figurative references. Over the years of exploring these

forms I finally turned to embrace the challenge of

making a “person” or figure. I should say that I spent

very little time as an art student drawing or sculpting

the figure.

What continues to attract you to the figure?

The human and animal figure is one of the premier

vehicles for expression in art. I love art that uses the

body and depicts these forms. I’m not sure if I really

am attracted to the making of figures. It’s difficult for

me to breathe life into these things. I have no formal

training in anatomy, I haven’t practiced figure drawing

and modeling, and I find it very difficult to make

a portrait of another person. I feel ambivalence and

reluctance when I try to increase the size of the figure.

I feel more exposed, more vulnerable to criticism. So

far, I feel it’s luck when I look at a little person I’ve

created and perceive a distinct personality there.

Training and practice can get you a long way, and the

willingness to trust my instincts and impulses is what

drives the work with the figures. I think of two quota-

tions from William Blake’s Proverbs of Hell: “If the

fool would persist in his folly he would become wise”

and “Improvement makes strait roads; but the crooked

roads without improvement are roads of genius.”

How do you see your work in relation to other ceramic

figurines? For example, The RISD Museum has an

extensive collection of porcelain figurines including

Meissen, Royal Derby, and so on. Can you talk a

little about the conceptual and technical similarities

or differences to this tradition?

What’s curious to me is the direct influence of the

ceramic figurine on the work of the past seven or eight

Interviews

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years. I used to hate that aspect of the historical

ceramic tradition: the silly, elitist, purely decorative

genre of the “figurine” exemplified by Meissen was

the last thing I thought would ever interest me when

I was starting out 35 years ago. The porcelain-figurine

tradition and genre were not valued by my teachers

and my colleagues. When I was a student I was

enamored with traditions of folk pottery from all

cultures around the globe. What caught my attention

then were the Haniwa figures from Japan and Han

and Tang dynasty ceramic figures and animals and

the beautiful flowing lead-based tri-color glaze used

on them. I now deeply admire both Asian and Euro-

pean porcelain figurines for their artistry and consum-

mate craftsmanship. From a social point of view,

the subject matter and content of European figurines

is fascinating. I’d like to learn more about them. I

have read The Arcanum, a wonderful book about the

invention of European porcelain, but I have not delved

into this subject in a scholarly way. I don’t make my

“little people” the way it’s done in royal porcelain

manu factories: I don’t use porcelain very often, and

I fire everyone in a salt kiln.

It seems to me that your work is deliberately rougher,

allowing for accidents in the firing.

Yes, my aesthetic is very different from the royalty

who collected porcelain in the 18th century. The way

I work with clay would have been anathema to the

artists of the 18th century trying to please their royal

patrons. I do like firing accidents and imperfections

that show the hand in the process of the craft. It

has always been a characteristic of my work. I use

the ceramic figurine as a foil for depicting monumental

scale. The roughness of the clay and the burned-out

colors dripping over the figures are in direct contrast

to the “perfection” of royal porcelain. This so-called

coarseness heightens the character of the types of

humanity in Inner City. My “godly” hands are making

this diminutive humanity. They are the workers,

low-lifes — generic people. Stretching the metaphor,

my people are the badly made ones, the cast-offs,

the losers. This is not to say that I don’t love the

perfection of the white porcelain and the brilliant

glazes used by the 18th-century figurine makers,

and marvel at their abilities to make in some cases

sublime works of art.

You seem to represent the daily activities and trials

of “everyman” that suggests a connection to Northern

European artists such as Bosch, Bruegel, and Ensor.

Have you looked at their work specifically?

My sympathies are with the various working classes

and the abject poor. My parents were and are left-wing

progressives who grew up poor in the 1920s and

’30s in Brooklyn. In their early years, they were in the

socialist party and deeply committed to changing

for the better the social and economic conditions for

Meissen Porcelain Factory, The Monkey Band (Affenkapelle) (detail), ca. 1749. Museum of Art, Rhode Island School of Design.Bequest of Miss Lucy T. Aldrich.

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the lower economic strata of American society. I grew

up in the 1950s and ’60s, and the influence of that

time cannot be underestimated for me. I’m from

well-educated middle-class privilege, but I have the

gnawing feeling it could all disappear in an instant.

I grew up with a strong awareness of the battle against

social injustice, imperialist war, the military-industrial

complex, and overarching dominance of corporate

America stealing our rights as citizens in a democracy.

Yes, I love Bruegel for his acute sympathy and

depiction of the “everyman,” and the way these artists

skewered the bourgeoisie and aristocracy. Bosch

and Ensor are favorites, as well as Daumier, Picasso,

Klee, Guston, Paula Rego, all the great Italian Quat-

trocento and Cinquecento artists . . . it’s an endless

list. I look directly at their work and take what I need.

In general, what inspires me about these great artists

is their ability to suck you into the worlds they make

with paint or wood or bronze or stone or clay. Standing

in front of The Temptation of St. Anthony by Bosch

in the National Museum of Ancient Art in Lisbon is

as engrossing an experience as one could find.

I have always looked at the history of ceramics

as well; this is a touchstone for me. All of human

experience can be found in the history of ceramics,

conveyed through pottery, painting on pottery, and

sculptural form — whether abstract or figurative, and

through many fascinating utilitarian objects. The

well is deep.

Photography is also an important influence for

my work. Atget, Evans, Abbott, Burckhardt, Cartier-

Bresson, Levitt, Davidson, Brady, Riis, Salgado,

the great Paul Strand (and his movie about New

York, Manhatta), Andreas Feininger. They are

all telling visual stories about people in the city,

or sometimes making images of the city that reflect

the human story.

How did you come to collaborate with Tiago Monte-

pegado, who designed the installation for your

sculpture? What do you think he brings to the project?

How did the idea for Inner City develop?

I’ve known Tiago since he was a teenager. He’s now

a practicing architect and also works doing special

projects with Galeria Ratton, Lisbon, where I’ve been

showing my work and doing projects for the last 20

years. Tiago brings sensitivity, creativity, rationality,

and both the architect’s “eye” and rigorous training to

our collaboration.

The idea for Inner City was born after Monte pe-

gado designed a base for a group of figures I was

showing at Galeria Ratton in 2005. With a few

simple grooved lines inscribed in its surface, the base

suggested an architectural setting — a plaza, a built

environment. This base made me realize that I wanted

to push the narrative with the small figures into a

context that confronts the viewer the way architecture

does. I later asked Tiago if he would be willing to

James Ensor, La Mort Poursuivant le Troupeau des Humains (Death Chasing the Flock of Mortals), 1896. Museum of Art, Rhode Island School of Design.Anonymous gift.

Walker Evans, Two Men in Front of Fuel Tank, Lower East Side, New York, 1934. Museum of Art, Rhode Island School of Design. Gift of James Dow. © Walker Evans Archive, The Metropolitan Museum of Art.

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collaborate on an amplification of what had happened

in that exhibition, The Burdened Fool and Other Stories.

What is the nature of your collaboration?

We work together as equals. In our collaboration, Tiago

serves as master city planner to my role as the creator

of little people, buildings, and other objects. Tiago

contemplates the space we have to use with the goal

of altering the viewer’s experience of that space.

The collaboration starts out as parallel play. Then we

mix our disciplines together and present the result

to the public. When I work with Tiago, I think about

the objects I have made and bring them to the gallery

as “stuff” — raw material, like wood or cement blocks.

In this case my “stuff” is somewhat peculiar-looking

compared to an ordinary two-by-four, for example,

and more valuable; yet its form remains constant from

exhibition to exhibition.

All in all, the objects — be they ceramic sculptures

or prosaic building materials — are parts of a greater

whole. Tiago does his thing: draws, thinks, designs,

mentally fashions all these “parts” into a blueprint

of the Inner City plan. Tiago and I go to the museum

or exhibition space after his alterations to the space

have been carried out. Together we experience this

new terrain and “build” the city by installing all

the ceramic parts together. We never do the same

thing twice, and the plan is always a little bit open

for last-minute changes.

Until 2005, I didn’t think in terms of “installation

art,” which involves the physical intervention or

manipulation of an entire room or space. I’m essen-

tially an object-maker engrossed in expressing myself

in what is a singular and somewhat peculiar way,

in this particular day and age. I realized that architects

are by definition “installation artists”; they work

with the space we physically exist in, and through a

rigorous design/thought process or their practice they

manipulate materials, think about the human experi-

ence and the human condition, and contribute a great

deal to the success or failure of the built environment

in which we live.

Where did you get the ideas for particular figures or

groups of figures in Inner City?

Some of the figures come from people I’ve noticed

on the streets or in the subways; an obvious example

is the figure pushing a shopping cart full of sacks.

I see people on a daily basis in Lower Manhattan

pushing around one or more shopping carts filled with

stuff. I always see many different scenarios of work

being performed on the streets: all types of building

construction, window cleaning, garbage collection,

people going down through manholes to work under

the street, etc. I also get ideas from the newspaper,

or from books I read about the history of New York.

An example is a book by Herbert Asbury, The Gangs

of New York, which was used by Martin Scorsese to

Arnie Zimmerman, The Burdened Fool and Other Stories, Galeria Ratton, Lisbon, 2005. Base design by Tiago Montepegado. Photo courtesy of Galeria Ratton.

16

make a movie with the same name — it gave me the

image of men brawling. In A Pickpocket’s Tale: The

Underworld of Nineteenth-Century New York, Timothy

J. Gilfoyle describes in detail the technique of the

“lock-step” used at Sing-Sing Correctional Facility

to control groups of inmates. After reading this, I

made the group of figures in a chain gang. I have

encountered many strange or startling situations on

the streets that I remember or, if I was lucky, was

able to photograph. One of the most memorable was

9/11; I was six blocks from the World Trade Center

that morning and witnessed it first-hand.

How has that experience of 9/11 been incorporated

into Inner City?

What a coincidence to be answering this question on

9/11/09. The events of 9/11 have had a huge impact

on my work. Pure and simple, what I saw that morning

forever changed my view of life. Terror, random death,

massive destruction, and a profound sense of imper-

manence and fragility are what entered my work after

9/11. I turned to one of the most undesirable aspect

of ceramics — its physical fragility. I began to make

large structures that were nearly impossible to pick

up and load in the kiln without them falling apart. If

the piece withstood the loading then it had to survive

the firing process. Sometimes it did, sometimes it

didn’t. If it didn’t, I would reassemble it into a gro-

tesque facsimile of its original shape. There was a

metaphoric correspondence to 9/11 in this pushing

of the limits of the ceramic process. If my structures

survived the firing, it was a triumph of my — and

therefore man’s — mastery of the world. If my struc-

tures fell apart, it confirmed what I know to be true:

we are not masters; we are impermanent, massively

destructive, terribly fragile, subject to random death,

dreamers and builders.

I know that there have been a lot of recent changes

in the Williamsburg neighborhood, where your studio

is. How do the everyday experiences of living in New

York affect your work?

When I arrived in Williamsburg in 1982 and set up a

ceramics studio, it was a very run-down area, as was

much of Brooklyn and downtown Manhattan. A lot

of Williamsburg had a palpable feeling of neglect,

sadness, and depression; the neighborhood was at its

lowest ebb. It was dangerous at night, nowhere to go

to for young hipster artists to hang out. Of course old

and new immigrant groups lived out there, in between

the dying industrial buildings from the 19th and early

20th centuries. I was very aware of the feeling of the

history of the area, and I loved it. Having a studio

out there at that time was great. I got lots of free

building material from the street from dumpsters, from

factories going out of business and throwing away their

contents. It was a little like the fall of Rome, when

barbarian hordes built their hovels out of scavenged

17

statuary and finely carved stone. Lots of people my

age and older remember NYC this way: abandoned,

forlorn, dangerous — an archeological site being sifted

through by a relatively small group of artists and

weirdos. Flash forward 25 years, and now Williams-

burg is a bedroom community for yuppies, hipsters,

and even very well-heeled people like bankers; the

ethnic working class is selling out or being forced out

by the new demographic. New condos are everywhere,

most factory buildings are either torn down or con-

verted to luxury loft living, and there are bars and

restaurants. At the same time, there is still an amazing

street life, and like most New Yorkers I spend a lot of

time walking on the street to get somewhere. I always

look at architecture. My eyes are always looking up at

buildings, taking in the endless variety of buildings.

You first showed Inner City at the architecture triennial

in Lisbon in 2007, and then in 2008 at the Keramiek-

museum Princessehof in the Netherlands. Can you

briefly describe how the presentation at RISD differs

from the previous iterations?

We had a fixed amount of work for the show in Lisbon

and Holland — about 120 objects in all. Tiago had polar

opposite spaces to work with: in Lisbon a huge space

in an old electricity-generating plant, and in Holland

a white-wall gallery in a jewel box of a museum. Tiago

came up with amazing solutions to make a bridge

between the narrative of the ceramic objects and the

spaces we had to work with. In Lisbon, he used

cement blocks to carve up the space into walls,

streets, passageways, and sitting areas, where the

viewer and the work could co-exist. The feeling was

vast and intimate, a modernist aesthetic meeting the

antiquated industrial past. In the Holland installation,

Tiago had the wonderful idea of using industrial

scaffold to fill the volume of the gallery space, wall

to wall and floor to ceiling. This choice of material

made a counterpoint to the refined museum atmo-

sphere as well as providing a dynamic armature in

which to display the ceramic objects. It also provided

the right context for the general themes of the sculp-

ture. I have added a great deal more objects to the

installation for RISD. I did a series in 2008 I call

Walled City for an exhibition at the Katonah Museum.

There I was offered more wall space than floor space,

so I created buildings and figures to be mounted

on the walls. The general theme of the work remained

the same.

The most recent components you made for Inner City

are architectural. You’ve added larger bridges and

buildings. How did this come about?

In 2009, I worked more on architectural forms, less

on the figure. My idea was that Inner City needed

some architectural diversity, more eclecticism,

reflecting the feeling of NYC as it is today. There are

larger structures in this group of work, curved forms,

Arnie Zimmerman, Walled City, in Conversations in Clay, Katonah Museum of Art, 2008. Photo by Cathy Carver.

18

forms that reference Mesoamerican architecture, and

a large, detailed industrial bridge. I was inspired by a

trip to Oaxaca, Mexico, and a story I read in the Times

written by a depressed person who found joy and

inspiration in the beauty and different character in

each bridge that spans the Harlem River. Since I live

on an island called Manhattan, I use bridges all the

time. They are an intrinsic part of the infrastructure

and, of course, iconic symbols of power. For the new

installation at RISD, I made an industrial-type bridge

I call “R.I.O. Bridge.” I used red iron oxide to coat

the clay structure, which I then fired in the salt kiln

numerous times.

You’ve worked in England and in Portugal. Have those

experiences influenced your art?

I’ve also worked in Japan and France. It’s always a

transforming experience to work in different countries

and cultures. To answer the question fully would take

a lot of time. The short answer is that going out to

other places in the world causes me to think a lot

about where I’m from and where I live. I would not

have created Inner City if I hadn’t worked and lived in

Portugal. Awareness of the rich histories and cultures

of Europe, Africa, Asia finally makes me think that

New York City and the U.S. is a youngish society but

we do have a past, and I want to find out as much

as I can about it. This impulse to learn about the past

also pertains to things like my studio building, the

building I live in, the streets I use every day, the

bridges, and the rivers around NYC, the layout of the

streets, the building of the subways. It’s strange to

know other people occupied the spaces I am using

now, they lived their lives in the exact same spot

as me and I don’t know their names or anything about

them. My studio building was part of a larger factory

that started out making wire armature for crinoline

dresses in the 19th century; they went on to manufac-

ture wire rope and screens. For decades and decades

they ran three shifts a day, old people in the neighbor-

hood remember, but there isn’t one photo of the

people who worked there that I can find or what the

factory looked like inside. I’d like to know; I’d like

the next people who use my building or the space it

occupies to know about them, and me.

Tiago Montepegadowith Judith Tannenbaum

JT: How has the architecture of the large Chace

Gallery designed by Rafael Moneo affected your

installation design?

TM: In this project, before an exhibition space exists

physically, it exists conceptually. This makes conversa-

tions about the importance of the physical space

quite fascinating for me as an architect. Taken to the

Zimmerman’s Williamsburg studio building, ca. 1940. Studio building, 2009. Photo by Arnie Zimmerman.

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extreme, the physical space for Inner City can be

anywhere, in any part of the world. This has in fact

been the case. Put differently, this is an artistic

project in which conceptual aspects take precedence

over other ideas. Consequently, it is not an architec-

tural project.

For the exhibition in Lisbon, I wrote the following

as a basis for reflecting upon the project: “Inner City is

an installation assumed in real time, and it intends to

construct a territory of interrogations. It is a space

where the visitor becomes participant. . . . Inner City

can be seen as the construction of the limit itself from

where the city can be (re)constructed.” I quote this

passage to show how, before being presented with this

magnificent formal exhibition hall designed by Rafael

Moneo, Inner City already had its Place.

You might even say that the end result as it now

stands has nothing in common with the initial ideas

that I had after I saw the photographs that were

sent to me and I visited the Chace Gallery. At the

time, I was thinking of the netting used in building

and metal structures, but then it called for a totally

different approach.

How did you approach the RISD space?

Not only does the Chace Gallery have a considerable

amount of space, but the volume is also very interest-

ing. It is a formal exhibition space with white walls,

a white ceiling, and a dark floor. At first sight it is

normal, with no major surprises. But then, looking

more closely, one sees that in fact the flooring is so

thin that, via delicate archaeology work, it is possible

to make out a regular white mesh pattern from another

past or future moment of occupation. Solid white

forms emerge from the floor, revealing another

topography, and finally the past or future city emerges

and comes to life.

How did you come up with the idea of the viewing

platform?

Curiously, the idea that we might see the limits of

Inner City began in Lisbon, when we were finishing off

assembling the exhibition. It took root in Leeuwarden,

when we placed a few of Arnie’s objects amidst the

regular mesh of scaffolding, at a level below the

wooden walkway. The situation we have here is one of

topography, and the idea that rising up could provide

a better understanding became essential for me.

More generally, what are the challenges for you

of installing Arnie’s work? Is it, first, the scale of the

work?

In my view, Inner City is not an installation — it is a

deliberate transformation. The space that hosts it is

transformed in such a way that the conceptual Place

is able to exist. I find it much more interesting to

bring about a transformation — something dynamic —

with an idea, with a concept. By comparison, I see

Architectural rendering of Inner City, 2009.

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an installation as being considerably more static.

The concept of transformation is interesting

because it seems to me to be the kind of territory in

which questions can emerge. The idea of a timeless

Inner City arises naturally from my own reflections

about the world in which we live, and also from my

understanding of Arnie’s work. A close look at his

characters and his constructions makes it easy to

create a narrative that can have any time frame. Of

course scale is an essential element in all of this —

the right scale, if such exists, or perhaps the seem-

ingly right scale, which can produce the full range of

sensations and emotions in a given Place.

Moving from drawings to the project itself, my

involvement as an architect seeks to enhance the

existing relationship of scale. This begins with the

relationship between the sculptures, and within them

the constructions and characters, and then between

Zimmerman’s work, the human scale, and the space

in which everything is taking place. In each of these

incarnations, the route has been very different, but

the concept has always been constant.

Looking at Inner City at the Electricity Museum,

visitors were confronted by a space with overwhelming

power, a hall for producing energy with all of its

steel-built machinery ready to run, and they could

imagine themselves in Fritz Lang’s Metropolis. Then

comes a wall (Inner City) made of concrete blocks

whose scale creates a considerable pause — which is

at the same time serene — amidst all of that noise.

Visitors did not know when things originated: whether

the Inner City wall is the vestige of something from the

past, or alternatively, whether the wall is the start of

something new, given the imposing presence of

industrial architecture. It was as if they were witness-

ing a transformation, although they did not know in

which direction.

In Leeuwarden, Inner City gave rise to a consider-

able spatial transformation, because it filled the

entire interior of the Keramiekmuseum Princessehof’s

temporary exhibitions gallery. A tight square mesh

was designed with scaffolding, which is common

in construction, within which everything took place.

The sense of entering into a space within Inner City,

without clearly understanding whether you are

witnessing building or recent destruction, was pre-

cisely the idea behind the timelessness that I have

mentioned. And I must add that this was made

possible by dismantling the hall’s false ceiling.

Being daring sometimes has its reward, and in that

case I discovered a hidden skylight which shed a

new magical light onto Inner City.

Inner City, Lisbon, 2007. Photo by Arnie Zimmerman.


24

Installed in the recently opened Chace Center, designed by Spanish architect

José Rafael Moneo, this incarnation of Inner City incorporates more than 30 new

pieces, including 2 bridges that are each 10 feet long, as well as approximately

60 pieces grouped together as Walled City, which was shown at the Katonah

Museum in 2008. Sprawled across a 4000-square-foot space, the exhibition

features a ramp designed by Montepegado with a 4-foot-high viewing platform,

where visitors can survey the panorama and appreciate the city’s narratives from

a variety of perspectives. The city itself is organized in a grid pattern across the

floor, punctuated by pedestals of differing heights which rise up from the ground

like buildings in a metropolis and a number of elements attached to the walls.


Organized by Judith Tannenbaum,

Richard Brown Baker Curator of Contemporary Art

25

26

27

Section view facing exhibition entrance (east wall).

Section view facing pedestals, wall-mounted sculpture, and ramp (north wall).

Floor plan showing ramp, pedestal locations, and grid pattern in Chace Gallery.

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29

30

Inner City 2008Keramiekmuseum Princessehof, Leeuwarden

Organized by Ank Trumpie,

Curator of Modern and Contemporary Ceramics

The design of the Tuinzaal (Garden Hall) at the Princessehof suits the main theme

of the work itself — an expanding city. This spotless museum hall, another notorious

“white cube,” lends itself perfectly to being transfigured, even to being decon-

structed. The artists decided to use scaffolding, a common sight on any construc-

tion site which, because of its spatial construction, offers almost architectonic

possibilities. The objects are arranged in a grid — similar to a map of Zimmerman’s

living and working place in New York. He also used a grid during his working

process, ensuring that none of the objects were thicker than 13 centimetres,

resulting in a uniformity redolent of a map of Manhattan. The buildings are placed

in parallel or at angles to each other on the “city blocks.” The contrast between

New Yorkers’ powerful urge for individuality and the constraints of the city grid that

governs their movement through the city is another theme Zimmerman embraces

in this concept. . . . All sorts of things happen in this “expanding city.” Montepegado

tries to impose structure on the city while Zimmerman continues to expand it

unrestrainedly. In Montepegado’s words: “It is impossible for a designer to plan for

a city without limits and this installation can therefore be construed as the physical

manifestation of that limit.”

[Excerpt from Fredric Baas, “Inner City,” in Ceramics: Art and Perception 74 (2008), 46–50.]

31

32

Entrance with graphic signage. Navigation through construction on raised walkways.

Section view: wood walkway and platforms within scaffolding grid.

Section views: arched ceiling of Garden Hall. Floor plan with wood walkway.

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34

The 2007 Lisbon Architecture Triennial gave American sculptor Arnie Zimmerman

and Portuguese architect Tiago Montepegado the chance to follow up on an earlier

installation created less than two years prior, when the young architect “installed”

an exhibition of ceramic figures sculpted by Zimmerman entitled The Burdened

Fool and Other Stories. It was at that moment that both artists felt the need to enter

into a deliberate collaboration, combining sculpted figures with architectural forms.

The result is the Inner City installation. It draws the utmost potential from the

unlikely combination of Zimmerman’s small sculptures and the huge cement-block

wall built by Montepegado to display them. The contrast could not have a greater

impact nor make greater sense: delicate sculptures and massive parallelepipeds

(or three-dimensional parallelograms); figurines full of movement and walls heavily

immobile, with the former multiple and varied and colorful and the latter uniform

and made of gray cement, recalling French poet Louis Aragon’s sad verse “Tout

avait la couleur uniforme du givre” (Everything had the unvarying color of frost).

The combination evokes a range of narratives whose uniting theme might be the

construction of the present day’s new cathedrals. That is how I saw it. Ultimately,

the artists display and visitors decide. Be that as it may, Montepegado has been

able to capture and return to Zimmerman some of his previous suggestions of

arches, monuments, and builders by means of a bare cement wall, which, as it

happens, functions as a critical metaphor for modern architecture — inhuman and

naked, oversized, transforming the small figures of builders into tiny dwarves.

However, the architectural mass unfolds to reveal variations on the wall theme —

here completely enclosed, partly open there — regular spaces maintaining commu-

nication between the worlds within and outside the wall. At the same time the

installation extends into the setting provided by the Electricity Museum, which

Inner City 2007Museu da Electricidade, Lisbon

Developed and produced by Ana Viegas,

Director, Galeria Ratton, Lisbon

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36

Concrete block wall along which visitors entered the exhibition. Buildings and figures in context of large-scale electrical equipment.

Section view: concrete block wall with openings to reveal ceramics.

Floor plan: concrete block wall in context of large-scale electrical equipment.

37

makes the work’s scale more intimidating still. It not only adds to the size, but also

brings greater complexity, thus ensuring a surreal link between the past, present,

and future of the “inner city.”

Emerging from between the breaches in the wall are the varied activities of the

tiny figures, who are both prisoners and builders of their prison. Their echo can be

found in the museum’s evocation of the industrial activities that once took place

within the former Tagus Power Station. Remotely inspired by Chinese porcelain and

its 18th-century European replicas, Zimmerman’s figurines nevertheless irresistibly

evoke the medieval miniatures associated with the work and leisure of the builders

of cathedrals. And, amongst all this feverish building activity, do we not see a

subtle metaphor for property speculation — the “bubble” that is such a feature of

global post-modernism?

What is certain is that, as we round the western edge of the wall, which the

architect has smoothed with a discrete personal alteration to the cement-block

uniformity, the sculpted figures take full control of the installation and unfold into

countless “stories.” There is no room to give account of them here; each visitor will

make their own narratives.

Does this group of prisoners recall the hard manual labor of the immigrant? Is

that scene there an accident, and then another one, this time with a patient being

carried on a stretcher, recalling Goya’s The Wounded Mason? Next there are all

kinds of merrymaking, perhaps inspired by the wine in Zimmerman’s beautiful jars

and amphorae? Alternating with work are several moments of rest; even one that

seems like meditation. Could it be? Is that a group fighting or playing a game whose

rules we do not know? And then, could that be another group in mid-libation? And

there is more: two characters fight while two other little men, slightly further on,

search for something in the bins found in every “inner city.” Sustenance?

Towards the end there is a miniature with a green face and a dancing pose,

perhaps celebrating the placing of a final stone. Who knows? And to finish, a jocular,

imbibing group drawn from our cities’ medieval origins appears to be watched by

someone. Could it be the architect, reclining with his legs crossed, while the group

indulges itself in its celebrations? Whatever the case, it is one possible end to this

recurring contrast between the activity of the builders and the monotony of the wall,

and gives full sense of Arnie Zimmerman and Tiago Montepegado’s collaboration.

[Manuel Villaverde Cabral, “Cathedral Builders: Arnie Zimmerman and Tiago Montepegado

at the 2007 Lisbon Architecture Triennial.” Translated by Louis Keil. Reprinted by permission

of the author.]

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Arnie Zimmerman

b. 1954, New York; lives and works

in New York City

Education

MFA, 1979, New York State College

of Ceramics, Alfred, NY

BFA, 1977, Kansas City Art Institute,

Kansas City, MO

Solo Exhibitions

2008

Inner City, Keramiekmuseum Princesse-

hof, Leeuwarden, the Netherlands

2007

Inner City, Museu da Electricidade,

Lisbon, Portugal

Sherry Leedy Contemporary Art, Kansas

City, MO

2006

Daum Museum, Sedalia, MO

2005

Galeria Ratton, Lisbon, Portugal

2004

Parables of Folly, Greenwich House

Pottery, New York, NY

2001

John Elder Gallery, New York, NY

Katonah Museum of Art, Katonah, NY

1999

John Elder Gallery, New York, NY

1996

Nancy Margolis Gallery, New York, NY

Shaw Guido Gallery, Pontiac, MI

1994

Snug Harbor Cultural Center, Staten

Island, NY


Habitat-Shaw Gallery, Farmington Hills, MI

1992


Museu do Azulejo, Lisbon, Portugal

Habitat-Shaw Gallery, Farmington Hills, MI

1991

Garth Clark Gallery, New York, NY

1989

E. L. Stark Gallery, New York, NY

1988

Objects Gallery, Chicago, IL

1987


1985

Helen Drutt Gallery, Philadelphia, PA


1984

Hadler Rodriguez Gallery, New York, NY

Selected Group Exhibitions

2008

Conversations in Clay, Katonah Museum

of Art, Katonah, NY (catalogue)

A Human Impulse: Figuration from the

Dianne and Sandy Besser Collection,

Arizona State University Art Museum,

Tempe, AZ

2006

The Bong Show, Leslie Tonkonow Artworks

+ Projects, New York, NY

The Figure in Context, The Clay Studio,

Philadelphia, PA

2005

A Tale to Tell, John Michael Kohler Art

Center, Sheboygan, WI (catalogue)

2004

Group Exhibition, Nancy Margolis Gallery,

New York, NY

2001

Between Thee and Me: Objects of Agency,

Scripps College 57th Ceramic Annual,

Claremont, CA (catalogue)

Inner Child, Islip Art Museum, Islip, NY

(catalogue)

1999

Clay Bodies, Neuberger Museum of Art,

Purchase, NY (catalogue)

1997

Inaugural Exhibition, John Elder Gallery,

New York, NY

Dorothy Weiss Gallery, San Francisco, CA

1995

New York, New York Clay, Rogaland

Kunstnersenter, Stavanger, Norway

39

Keepers of the Flame, Kemper Museum,

Kansas City Art Institute, Kansas City, MO

1994

Waves of Influence: cinco séculos do

azulejo português, Snug Harbor Cultural

Center, Staten Island, NY; Everson

Museum of Art, Syracuse, NY; Museum

of Art, Rhode Island School of Design,

Providence, RI (catalogue)

Reverence for Clay/Irreverence, Trans-

Hudson Gallery, Jersey City, NJ

Orgamorphic Form, Foster-Goldstrom

Gallery, New York, NY

1993

Ceramic National, Everson Museum of Art,

Syracuse, NY

The Legacy of the Archie Bray Foundation:

A Celebration of Ceramic Art 1952–1993,

Bellevue Art Museum, Bellevue, WA

1991

Outdoor Sculpture Festival, Snug Harbor

Cultural Center, Staten Island, NY

1990


Syracuse, NY

1989

Surface and Form, National Museum of

Ceramic Art, Baltimore, MD

Special Exhibition of Top Ceramic

Designers, Mino, Japan

American Clay Artists, Port of History

Museum and The Clay Studio,

Philadelphia, PA

Museu do Azulejo, Lisbon, Portugal

1988

Gulbenkian Foundation, Contemporary Art

Museum, Lisbon, Portugal

1987


Syracuse, NY

Clay Revisions, Seattle Art Museum,

Seattle, WA

Clay Feats, Snug Harbor Cultural Center,

Staten Island, NY

1986

Poetry of the Physical, American Craft

Museum, New York, NY

Contemporary Arts: An Expanding View,

Squibb Gallery, Princeton, NJ, and

Monmouth Museum of Art, Lincroft, NJ

Material and Metaphor, Chicago Cultural

Center of Fine Arts, IL

1984

House on the Borderline, White Columns,

New York, NY

RISD Clay Invitational, Museum of Art,

Rhode Island School of Design,

Providence, RI

1983

The Raw Edge: Ceramics of the Eighties,

Hillwood Art Gallery, Greenvale, NY

Ceramic Directions: A Contemporary

Overview, State University of New York,

Stony Brook

Scripps College 39th Ceramic Annual,

Long Art Gallery, Claremont, CA

1978

Young Americans: Clay, Museum of

Contemporary Crafts, New York, NY

Selected Permanent Collections American Craft Museum, New York, NY

Arizona State University Museum of Art,

Tempe, AZ

Brooklyn Museum, Brooklyn, NY

Contemporary Art Center, Honolulu, HI

Detroit Institute of Art, Detroit, MI

Dodson Insurance Company,

Kansas City, MO

Everson Museum of Art, Syracuse, NY

Frost Art Museum, Miami, FL

Keramiekmuseum Princessehof,

Leeuwarden, the Netherlands

Los Angeles County Museum of Art, CA

Milwaukee Art Museum, Milwaukee, WI

Mint Museum of Art, Charlotte, NC

Museum of Ceramic Art, Alfred, NY

Museum of Decorative Arts, Montreal,

Canada

Nacional Museu do Azulejo, Lisbon,

Portugal

Prudential Insurance Company,

Newark, NJ

Shigaraki Ceramic Cultural Park,

Shigaraki, Japan

Smithsonian American Art Museum,

Renwick Gallery, Washington, DC

World Ceramic Exposition Foundation,

Icheon, Korea

Yellowstone Art Center, Billings, MT

Selected Grants

2005

Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation,

fellowship

1999

New York Foundation for the Arts,

sculpture fellowship

1992

Arts International, Lila Wallace-Reader’s

Digest Fund International, artist grant for

residency in Portugal

1991, 1987

New York Foundation for the Arts,

fellowship

1990, 1986, 1982

National Endowment for the Arts,

fellowship

1990

E.S.C.A. Grant to New York State

Craft Artist

1990

American Embassy (Portugal),

travel grant

Selected Bibliography

Baas, Fredric. “Inner City: Arnie

Zimmerman and Tiago Montepegado.”

Ceramics: Art and Perception 74, 2008.

Del Vecchio, Mark. Postmodern Ceramics.

London: Thames & Hudson, 2001.

Koplos, Janet. “Arnold Zimmerman at

John Elder.” Art in America, May 2000.

Kuspit, Donald. Parables of Folly. New

York: Greenwich House Pottery, 2004.

Niederlander, Rebecca. “Between

Thee and Me: Objects of Agency.”

Claremont, CA: Scripps College, 2001.

Perreault, John. “Big Apple Clay.”

American Ceramics 14, no. 2 (2003).

40

Tiago Montepegado

b. 1970, Lisbon, Portugal; lives and

works in Lisbon

Education1995, Faculdade de Arquitectura da

Universidade Técnica, Lisbon

Architecture Projects (Portugal)

2008

Bartolomeu Cid dos Santos, Print and

Design Museum, Tavira

Houses for rural tourism, Marco de

Canaveses

Social facilities for young women, Tavira

2006

Single-family house, Restelo, Lisbon

Galeria Ratton, Lisbon

2005

Interpretive structure for archaeological

discovery, Casa de Corpo Santo, Setubal

2004

Competition (collaboration with João

Vieira), Museum of Art and Archeology

of Vale do Côa

2003

Casa Campião office, Faro

2002

Casa Campião office, Funchal, Ilha da

Madeira

Graça Morais artist studio, Lisbon

Competition (collaboration with Mariana

Viegas and Pedro Gomes), Cultural Art

Center, Odivelas

Apartment, Lisbon

2001

EuroD-Digidoc office, Oeiras

Competition, youth hostel, Portalegre

Cemetery, Santa Cruz, Madeira

Apartment, Rua Passos Manuel, Lisbon

2000

Competition, Human Sciences and Arts

Complex, Universidade de Évora

1998

Competition, military complex, Tavira

Apartment, Casa Jardim, Lisbon

Apartment, Bairro Alto, Lisbon

1996

Residential campaign headquarters for

Jorge Sampaio (collaboration with Manuel

Graça Dias and José Romano), Lisbon

Exhibition Installation and Graphic Design (Galeria Ratton, Lisbon, Portugal)

2008

Ana Sério: Shadow of the Mirror

Ana Hatherly: Art of the Suspended

Jun Shirasu: A Seed — Returned from

the East

2007

Teresa Ramos: Communicating Vessels

Bartolomeu dos Santos: Boxes of Memories

Françoise Schein: Movements of Living

2006

António Dacosta: Intimate Work

Graça Morais: Dialogues with the Earth

2005

Arnie Zimmerman: The Burdened Fool

and Other Stories

Betty Woodman

Artistic Collaborations

2008

Inner City, co-presented by Galeria Ratton

(Lisbon) and Keramiekmuseum Princesse-

hof, Leeuwarden, the Netherlands

2007

Inner City, presented by Galeria Ratton,

Museu da Electricidade, Lisbon Architec-

ture Triennial

Bibliography

“Revista Cubo” 002. Art and Architecture

(Portugal), 2007.

Sardo, Delfim. “Tijolo a Tijolo.”

Arquitectura e Vida (Portugal), 2007.

Vieira. Sílvia. Interview. Mais Arquitectura

(Portugal), 2007.

Rodeia, João Belo. “Inner City: A Wall

Inhabited.” Mais Arquitectura (Portugal),

2007.

Carvalho, Ricardo. “Palimpsest House

in Restelo.” Jornal Público–Mil Folhas

(Portugal), June 17, 2006.

I think of the figures and their actions and situations as exist-ing in the realm of dreams and metaphors. They are not meant to be read as allegories for the noble ideals of civilization; these people are the ones in our peripheral vision. This periph-ery is an important existential terrain in my work. Into it pours narratives from the observation of everyday life on the street, reading stories and seeing pictures of events in the news-papers. Memories of things I’ve done and experienced in the 30 years I’ve lived and worked in New York combined with the study of historical events also get mixed into these narrative paths. I have a recurring dream about walking down a familiar street in the city and suddenly seeing an alley unknown to me. I walk down the alley finding different people, architecture, undiscovered neighborhoods. . . . The feeling of wonder and displacement and longing, or saudade, for this other reality is what I’m after in this work. Knowing where you are but still being able to be surprised by where you are, discovering mean-ing in terrain you no longer notice on a daily basis. — Arnie Zimmerman, 2007

Inner City is an installation assumed in real time that fosters a territory of inquiry. A space where, upon entering, the visitor is compelled to participate. It is a group of parallels. They will never meet. They will never cross, creating a void that is occu-pied by all of us. There are no such cities. Or are all the cities like this? Is it true that we only see the others when we are at the window and look to the other side of the street? — Tiago Montepegado, 2007

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43

All ceramic works are stoneware clay, glaze, and epoxy; 2006–09. They are on loan from Arnie Zimmerman.

Artist acknowledgments

Arnie Zimmerman Thank you to Judith Tannenbaum, the staff of The RISD Museum, Tiago Montepegado, Ana

Maria Viegas, Manuel da Costa Cabral, Howard Rosenthal, Patti Nelson, Lesley Day, Fumi Nakamura, Cara

O’Brien, Lindsay Gilberto, Ancil Farell, Chris Gustin and Nancy Train Smith, and my wife, Ann Rosenthal.

Tiago Montepegado Thank you to Fernando Rodrigues, Inês Matos, Carla Cerqueira, Catarina Botelho, Ana

Viegas, José Mateus, José Manuel dos Santos, Eduardo Moura, André Correia, Vera Pires Coelho, Dinís

da Silva, Clara Queiroz, Heitor Tender, Ank Trumpie, Fredric Baas, John Maeda, Ann Woolsey, James Hall,

Judith Tannenbaum, Zeljka Himbele, Brian McNamara, Laura Ostrander, Michael Owen, Stephen Wing, and,

especially, Inês Lobo.

Photo credits

Cover Inner City buildings and figures in Zimmerman’s studio; photo by Cathy Carver. Pages 2–3 Photos

of New York City buildings by Arnie Zimmerman; detail photography of Inner City by Arnie Zimmerman.

Pages 6 and 22–29 Photos of Inner City, Museum of Art, Rhode Island School of Design, 2009, by Erik Gould.

Pages 8 and 31–33 Photos of Inner City, Keramiekmuseum Princessehof, Leeuwarden, 2008, by Erik & Petra

Hesmerg. Pages 10 and 35–36 Photos of Inner City, Museu da Electri cidade, Lisbon, 2007, by Catarina Botelho

(except page 36, upper left, by Tiago Montepegado). Pages 27, 32, 37 Architectural drawings by Tiago Monte-

pegado; © Tiago Montepegado. Pages 42–43 Photos of New York City buildings by Arnie Zimmerman; detail

photography of Inner City by Cathy Carver and Erik & Petra Hesmerg.

Edited by Amy Pickworth

Designed by Julie Fry

Printed by Meridian Printing

Typeset in Trade Gothic

Printed on Scheufelen Job Parilux Silk

ISBN 978-0-615-32566-8

Library of Congress Control Number 2009937980

Support for Inner City at The RISD Museum has been provided by the Providence Tourism Council,

Ministry of Culture/Directorate-General for the Arts, Portugal, and Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation, with

additional funding for the catalogue from Friends of Contemporary Ceramics and Howard A. Rosenthal.

Published on the occasion of the exhibition Inner City: Arnie Zimmerman and Tiago Montepegado,

Museum of Art, Rhode Island School of Design, Providence, September 26, 2009 – January 3, 2010.

© 2009 Museum of Art, Rhode Island School of Design

Documents

Inner City