Zak Timan

Inspired by Calder, I had a vision of a floating mobile. The vision held my mental eye captive. When I started producing them I found that they had the same effect in a concrete form. That is, the revelation of livingness. Unlike the work of Calder and Mondrian, who were focused on movement to reveal livingness, my work, relatively, is quite still. In some ways this work is an extension of theirs. In other ways it is a reversal, or dissolution. In it, I intend to realize a more subtle, or essential quality of energy- the energy before movement, before color and shapes. Where mobiles are at energy’s effect, potentials are at source. I am creating sculpture that literally has energy stored in it versus showing the energy that is around (mobiles don’t hold energy, they reveal the energy already in space).

The sculpture actually contain a quantifiable amount of energy that can be calculated via a derivation of Hook’s Law and the equation for potential energy, the energy of position. It is this energy of what is about to happen that gives the work its brimming quality. I call it Potential Sculpture because it allows us to see the energy inherent in stillness, something so many of us have forgotten in this busy culture focused on doing and doing and doing – our “culture kineticism”. This work is here to remind us all of the wild, expansive and incalculable potential inherent in each moment.