| Filling Chace Center to the brim, the largest gallery at Rhode Island School of Design (RISD) Museum of Art in the City of Providence, Inner City comprised an astonishing array of architectural-scale models and tiny figurines fashioned entirely out of clay. All the little male people—the sculptor’s version of Everyman—strikingly similar in their facial and bodily characteristics, bring to mind countless crowd scenes found in old Depression-ear Hollywood movies. A collaboration of New York ceramicist Arnie Zimmerman and Lisbon architect Tiago Montepegado, the convoluted twists and turns of this bustling model city readily invite reflections on the history of man. |  |
Edward Rubin
Filling Chace Center to the brim, the largest gallery at Rhode Island School of Design (RISD) Museum of Art in the City of Providence, Inner City comprised an astonishing array of architectural-scale models and tiny figurines fashioned entirely out of clay. All the little male people—the sculptor’s version of Everyman—strikingly similar in their facial and bodily characteristics, bring to mind countless crowd scenes found in old Depression-ear Hollywood movies. A collaboration of New York ceramicist Arnie Zimmerman and Lisbon architect Tiago Montepegado, the convoluted twists and turns of this bustling model city readily invite reflections on the history of man. Think Balzac’s La Comédie humaine or the densely populated panels of Pieter Bruegel and Hieronymus Bosch: here mankind is seen variously at work, daydreaming, carousing, or marching off to war—in short, going through the daily grind of industry.
Before turning to figure modeling, Zimmerman, a mid-career artist, with a master’s degree from New York State College of Ceramics at Alfred University, was drawn to large ceramic pots and container forms. During his early college years he spent his summers carving monumental blocks of limestone in the south of France. In grad school he began to build large, thick-walled hollow pottery forms. When the clay became leather-hard, he carved the surface, giving it the appearance of worked stone. In 1996, putting on the back burner his large totemic vessels, which first brought him to public awareness, Zimmerman, whose studio in Williamsburg, Brooklyn boasts it own kiln, switched his attention to modeling the human figure.
The RISD installment, its third and most comprehensive to date, was first exhibited at the Museu da Electricidade, Lisbon in 2007. On that occasion, Montepegado and Zimmerman, whose partnership began with a figure-only exhibit in 2005, decided to employ industrial archetypes to add narrative weight to the overall montage. Using cement blocks of varying heights and dimensions as their foundation, they started constructing a complete miniature city whose dramatically lit towers and other buildings serve as backdrop to the activities of its Lilliputian inhabitants. At Leeuwarden’s Princessehof Museum the following year, again playing as city planners, they added scaffolding, walkways, and a street-like grid, conjuring a vibrant city surging uncontrollably ahead.
Cobbled together from hundreds of handcrafted figurative and architectural elements, all situated on or astride the white pedestals and walls, the installation teemed with an army of buildings, chimneys, industrial pipes, I-beams, stairs, a giant ladder, and assorted downtrodden masses, either alone or in groups. Everywhere Zimmerman’s colorfully glazed men, when not involved in real work, can be seen arguing or fighting amongst themselves. Most are carting heavy loads, carrying industrial tools, and in some cases weapons of war. A number meld into the very loads they’re hauling, while others have jugs or tubes for heads. Crowning the lot is a large ominous black bridge and an elevated viewing platform, an arresting coda to this exercise in clay nation. Taken as a whole, Inner City is a window on the human condition, engendering a hypnotic, if crushing experience. Think of the urban dystopia of Fritz Lang’s Metropolis. No wonder the viewer is left contemplating the fate of humanity.
