Hall is drawn to sculpture for its potential to produce spatial experiences. He says of his three-dimensional works that they open the view, not unlike a landscape where the sky is visible through the trees. Setting the space in motion, the walker’s gaze again comes into play.
Should one just stand reverently before them? When it comes to Nigel Hall’s sculptures, that’s not the best way to appreciate them. Instead, you must walk all around them, exploring them from every angle. These are works of art brought to life by the experience of movement. They embody the perception of shape-shifting through a change in perspective, as one experiences when walking or driving past a stationary object, and feeling a sense of movement innate within it.
British artist Nigel Hall (born 1943 in Bristol) is drawn to sculpture for its potential to produce spatial experiences. He says of his three-dimensional works that they open the view, not unlike a landscape where the sky is visible through the trees. Setting the space in motion, the walker’s gaze again comes into play.
The artist not only creates sculptures but also monochrome and colour drawings. Forming an autonomous part of his work rather than sketches for his sculptures, they allow him to explore the issue of perception on a smaller scale. The artist compares his works on paper with the small plot of a Japanese garden in which the clever use of perspective creates the optical illusion of a space that is far larger than the garden’s actual dimensions.
Some of Hall’s drawings feature shapes and forms, applied in gouache: deep yellows, blacks and reds. Also visible, and adding a rough and unfinished touch, are some sketchy charcoal lines and smudges that hint at the actual manual work involved. The charcoal articulates the pictorial space, adding shadows or aureoles to the apparent flawlessness of the forms in colour, and bringing another, less clearly defined dimension to these drawings.
The elliptical forms that dominate Hall’s sculptural works and drawings allude to the artist’s walk-honed perception that all is mutable and finite. Reflecting his own views of landscapes and spaces, they allude to the fact that circular shapes appear as ellipses in perspectival distortion as we move past them.