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  • Nathan Mabry

    Heavy Handed (Red Piece), 2019

    95 x 46 3/4 x 42 1/2, aluminum and paint, edition of 4.


    Image Courtesy of Krista Photography


    At deCordova, Mabry’s Heavy Handed (Red Piece) is on view in front of the museum entrance. Just like the rest of his Heavy Handed series, the sculpture combines Minimalist aesthetics and materials with a culturally-specific hand signal. The fingers of this blocky red hand may suggest a sign of peace, a crude telling off, a symbol of victory, or simply a way of counting to two. To viewers familiar with modern art, they may seem to mock the austerity of Donald Judd’s wall-mounted box “stacks.” Mabry intentionally plays with cultural knowledge to incite many meanings out of isolated symbols. Depending on where they stand in relation to the sculpture or their cultural background, the meanings range from the benign to the profane.