ONTOLOGICALLY BOUND
The Sculpture of Saint Clair Cemin
The path of the sculptor is never easy. The sustained effort to establish authority through forms and materials has a much more open and diverse context than that of painting. To view an artist’s growth, sometimes well after the fact, in new contexts, is an estimable challenge. Saint Clair Cemin was originally working as a printmaker in the Seventies, but after viewing a retrospective of the conceptual artist Joseph Beuys, he had his “eyes opened” to a new way of thinking about form. He had to decide what kind of artist he really wanted to be. After two years he established his practice as a postmodern sculptor. When he first arrived in New York in the Eighties he connected with writers and curators who appreciated and encouraged his approach. Cemin’s place within the community of Neo-geo artists became an important one because, unlike them, he brought an ambiguously formal presentation that merged incongruous agendas of display with historically heavy forms that were sampled as silhouettes and affixed to their physical supports. A good example of this was “Au Bonheur de Dames” (1987), included in "The New Poverty,” curated by Collins and Milazzo. To this day, the concept of merged agendas has a strong identification within his oeuvre.
Seen through a historical keyhole, these works were very much of their time. In the decade of the twentieth century, sculpture was to become important again. Cemin’s work was prescient of this sea change by at least a few years, given his influences, not only within Conceptualism, but leaking forward from the printmaking practice he had given up to pursue sculpture. The forms he was achieving possessed a certain optics that could only have been gleaned from works on paper. He was to give contemporary sculpture an informed species of dreaming.
An interim of decades has passed between these glimpses of Cemin’s work and his current production. One cannot answer for all the changes, yet they have been considerable. The meaning of his sculptural form has evolved, and it’s necessary to address the rigor that runs like a current through each one. Cemin’s imagination is fluidic and goes against preconceptions of historical weight. He takes chances, daring himself to add to his oeuvre by creating forms that might be considered too commonplace, even banal. His pursuance of form dictates that he observe no overt proscription on his way to subsequent discoveries. Various successful works have exhibited a range of expression in types of form that were never dictated by what came before, nor by ideas of his identity by others. We must accept each work as a move in the process of a philosophical advancement. Like a game of chess, Cemin’s sculptures represent moves in a strategy. They are moved through a familiar territory yet they accrue meaning in relation to the game. The aggregate of their meaning is transferred to the viewer.
Cemin’s most recent work is called “Fistiki” (2024). This work is a return to the introspective work that his original series represented, though these are progressively sensuous by comparison. The main body of the work is sculpted in bronze, given a pulpy, pressed clay feel. From one side it resembles a female form, rather voluptuously squatting upon the floor with one arm upraised, lifting a miniscule form sculpted in marble. This could be an infant or child, it has a birdlike grace. From another perspective the main form resembles an organic growth, like a stumpy tree or a branch metaphysically separated from its main trunk, and the smaller form, a fruit or nut soon to be disattached in the fullness of time. The dual meanings of the title perhaps drive perception as much as the ambiguity of the forms, for Fistiki means ‘bean’ or ‘nut’ while at the same time being a slang expression for a beautiful woman, lithe and mysterious in posture, gesture, and mien.
Saint Clair Cemin is a sculptor singular in the marriage between a visionary language and an intellectual method to qualify the diverse introspective and interrogatory aspects of his works within their overall oeuvre. His return to intimate form bespeaks the sort of sea change in an artist’s direction that augurs well for what is to come. He brings new currents of meaning to the experience, contributing to what art may still become.