Book Description
Figuring Color looks at the work of four artists who use color and shape to represent a metaphorical body. For instance, Roy McMakin's sculpture of a chair is at once a body and an implication of an absent body, where two tables intertwined suggest bodies nestled together. Kathy Butterly's ceramic sculptures are miniature bodies, whose sensuality amplifies clay's potential for delightful form. In Felix Gonzalez-Torres's sculptures, piles of wrapped candy and plastic-bead curtains are experienced through touch, privileging the physical body while still evoking a metaphorical body. Sue Williams's riotously colorful paintings explore the body abstracted, represented entirely through color. Poems by Charles Bernstein, Mei-Mei Berssenbrugge, Jen Bervin, Lee Ann Brown, Miles Champion, Marcella Durand, Craig Dworkin, Tonya Foster, Alan Gilbert, Lisa Jarnot, Vincent Katz, Damon Krukowski and others respond to the book's sensuous theme.