Red Sculpture

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 six-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 stands upright, its separate parts surreally elongated, connected by chains, and accessorized with mechanical hardware. Red Sculpture meets the viewer's gaze through the window, reflecting the invasive character of surveillance and offering a discomfiting vision of control. 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 unadorned space of the vitrine.

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4 rue de Ponthieu

Paris, NY