October 14–December 20, 2024
rue de Ponthieu, Paris

Detail of red sculpture of a boy suspended in air by a chain in 6 parts

In conjunction with Art Basel Paris, Jordan Wolfson’s Red Sculpture (2017–24) is on view in the street-facing vitrine at Gagosian, rue de Ponthieu, Paris.

Throughout his practice, Wolfson contrasts the physical, virtual, and imaginary realms, examining the projection of internal impulses onto constructed selves and scenarios. Crafting enigmatic narratives that explore uncomfortable social and existential topics, he marshals the power of the uncanny in a confrontational drama on rue de Ponthieu.

Red Sculpture is a seven-foot-tall puppet of a ragged-trousered young boy with a likeness to Mad magazine figurehead Alfred E. Neuman. Made of semiflexible glossy red urethane, the scowling figure has been bisected, the upper part of the body lying on the floor while the legs dangle from a chain above it. Its separate parts are surreally elongated, connected by chains, and accessorized with mechanical hardware. Red Sculpture meets the viewer’s gaze through the window, echoing the invasive character of surveillance and offering a discomfiting vision of control. This Huckleberry Finn–like trickster and truth-teller appears punished and diminished here, in another chapter of Wolfson’s ongoing saga around the character.

Jordan Wolfson with Colored Sculpture (2016). Photo: Martin Godwin

Red Sculpture revisits the figure in Wolfson’s earlier Colored Sculpture (2016) and resonates with Body Sculpture (2023), which was recently exhibited at and acquired by the National Gallery of Australia in Canberra (2024). In Colored Sculpture, the subject—a character parallel to Red Sculpture’s—performs a sequence of violently unpredictable movements controlled by hidden motors. Body Sculpture—in which a boxlike mechanical form interacts with a robotic arm—also combines animatronics with Minimalist and figurative elements. In all these works, Wolfson articulates formal, spatial, and associative concerns, prompting viewers to reflect on their own intuitive drives.

Red Sculpture replaces the startling motion and animated eyes of Colored Sculpture with a cadaverous look and feel, an unsettling impression that is enhanced by its isolation in the stagelike space of the vitrine. In confronting viewers with an entirely contrived, fabricated “event,” Wolfson considers the way in which our psyches are impacted and altered by the process of representation.

Red sculpture of a boy suspended in air by a chain in 6 parts

Jordan Wolfson
Red Sculpture, 2017–24

Semiflexible red urethane, stainless steel hardware, nylon mesh, and chain
84 × 24 × 18 inches (213.4 × 61 × 45.7 cm)
AP 2/2 + edition of 3

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Gagosian

Jordan Wolfson Red Sculpture, 2017–24