Sculptures of stacked scrap metal sit behind the front window of the Nasher Sculpture Center.
Artist Oshay Green, who grew up in North Texas and now lives in Paris, collected discarded pieces of tire rims, spare parts, piping and other materials from a metal junkyard in Dallas as the building blocks of his art.
The sculptures, held together by nothing but their own weight and gravity, have somewhat of a resemblance to human figures. Each sculpture has its own round base with a type of body and face.
“Eventually everything becomes sort of figurative after a while or you see that it holds a body of its own,” he said.
Green also created Elevation Solo For 4 Piece Drum Set, a composition that hangs on the back wall of the gallery. It walks visitors through a set of instructions to sonically experience the sculptures through drum sequences they compose themselves. The width of each sculpture’s scrap metal pieces translates to a kick, snare, tom or hihat of a drum set.
He hopes “people can just see the work and be challenged by their imagination rather than a defined idea.”
This story has been lightly edited for clarity:
It was great to hear that you're from Dallas. Where did you grow up or where did you used to live?
I moved around a lot as a kid, so like all of D-FW. I lived in West Dallas for a bit as a kid, Pleasant Grove, Duncanville. I lived in Plano and Frisco for a little bit. Rockwall for like a year. I've moved around so much that it's all a blur. But the whole D-FW metroplex, I feel like I've been in every single corner of it.
Is there anything in the North Texas art scene that helped shape you?
Yes, absolutely. There's a large group of artists that are in D-FW that are still active. The two people that got me introduced to the art scene are Paul Winker, who's an incredible painter, and River Shell, who is just an all-around artist. There's this gallery called PRP. It's where one of my studios was – I just moved out of there recently. It's a spot that really helped mold who I was.
For people who maybe haven't had a chance to see it, can you talk a little bit about what's in the exhibition?
It was a collection of cast iron pieces that I've been hoarding, but I picked them up from a metal scrap shop. You know, usually it deals with a casting process or adhering somehow when it comes to assemblage. So the only thing that could really work with it is the physicality of it, just the weight. The weight helps sandwich the works to create a body.
I'm curious, why scrap metal? You said you were drawn to it. Was it its weight, how it looks, what it says or what about it interested you?
It's cool because I feel like hypothetically those scrap metal pieces can hold a magnetic charge. You know, it's an interesting hypothesis of it kind of living in a way – that it has a charge or an energy to it. It's like a primal yet technological kind of way of it.
What do you want people to understand about your exhibition or take away from it? I think it's interesting that it's in front of the window so people are walking by.
I want people to really play with our imagination. We're in a place where we have to be really creative with a lot of our critical thinking and find alternatives and outlets for us to kind of maneuver with what we're going through at this moment.
I thought it was really interesting that you said none of the pieces are welded together because you can't and so they're essentially stacked on each other with no adhesive, so they could fall down. Why was that interesting to you or why did you make that choice?
I made the choice because I had to make the choice, but I was really interested in the choice. I was interested in those pieces not being able to be permanently standing. I mean they're all stacked pieces. So, if you sit one aside by itself, it becomes a sort of monolith. And if it's a monolith that's able to just fall or be destroyed, at some point it will fall. It's like a really, really, really important thing. When it falls you can build it back up again step by step.
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