Notes on Sculpture with Erik Patton

In preparation for Sculpture 56, the building-wide sculpture show opening April 13 at 56 Bogart St, we took some time to find out more about Erik Patton's process and ideas about the specificity of sculpture. Take a moment and get in the mood for the group sculpture show featuring Patton's work in Perceptual Slip at Amos Eno Gallery.

Amos Eno Gallery: Why sculpture? What is it about sculpture that makes it a compelling medium for your art?

Erik Patton: I like what sculpture asks of the viewer, the art object, and the exchange between the two. I make works that are inherently participatory, so I'm mostly interested in what sculpture asks of the body. AEG: Please describe your process of working with three-dimensions. Where do you start?

EP: My process is relational and responds to my lived experience. For instance, I have an ongoing performance called Dating Performed that incorporates and re-presents (in a lecture-cum-performance format) my dating and sex life. And Solar Anus were plucked from the ass casts created during came from A Casting Call for Assholes, a performance that took place at Soho House.

AEG: In what ways does sculpture invoke the body?

EP: Does naming the phenomenological inherently asks questions of the body? What then does this ask about sculpture in relation to materiality, surface, and facade?