Art@Site www.artatsite.com van, Claes Oldenburg Bruggen Saw, Sawing
Artist:

van, Claes Oldenburg Bruggen

Title:

Saw, Sawing

Year:
1995
Adress:
Tokyo International Exhibition Center
Website:
www.guggenheim.org:
In 1976, during Claes Oldenburg's installation of Trowel I (1971) at the Kröller-Müller Museum in Otterlo, Netherlands, Van Bruggen suggested that the sculpture be bright blue rather than its original color of silver. She was familiar with the work since it had first been shown at Sonsbeek 71, an exhibition of sculpture that took place throughout various locations in the Netherlands and for which Van Bruggen co-edited a catalogue.
Oldenburg took her suggestion and the two began a relationship as collaborators. The couple wed in 1977 and the following year left the Netherlands to move into a SoHo, New York, building recently purchased by Oldenburg. Over the next three decades they worked collaboratively on drawings, installations, performances, and most prominently, over 40 site-specific public sculptures they called the "Large-Scale Projects."
Their massive enlargements of quotidian objects such as shuttlecocks, knives, and blueberry pie slices are permanently installed in urban sites around Asia, Europe, and the United States.

www.oldenburgvanbruggen.com:
Saw, Sawing
Tokyo International Exhibition Center, Big Sight, Tokyo
Steel, epoxy resin, fiber-reinforced plastic, polyurethane and polyvinyl chloride foams; painted with polyester gelcoat 50 ft. 8 in. x 4 ft. 9 in. x 40 ft. (15.4 x 1. 5 x 12.2 m)
Commissioned January 1995 by the Tokyo Metropolitan Government
Installed March 1996

www.bigsight.jp:
There are 8 works of Art display at Tokyo Big Sight. Each harmonizes with its surrounding to create an enriched ambiance. Highly individualistic, these works of art are attracting large crowds.
This sculpture is located in the north side of the Main Entrance Hall. It is a large scale saw placed as if it were sawing through the earth.