John Douglas Powers
John Douglas Powers
John Douglas
Powers
b. 1978 STUDIO IN KNOXVILLE, TN
Creaking and swaying back and forth like a noisy field of tall grass, John Douglas Powers’s sculptural installation Ialu overwhelms the senses. Each individual steel reed connects to a wooden support, which moves with the aid of a motorized drive shaft. The rhythmic wave of the reeds against the projection of mirrored clouds seems strangely natural, even as the squeak and groan of the machine’s underbelly reminds you of the hand-wrought, physical workings that create such an illusion.
The title of the work comes from the ancient Egyptian sekhet ialu, or “fields of reeds,” the traditional conception of paradise based on the reed fields of the Nile. Ialu evokes the sublimity of such a timeless, perfect world even as it insists that you examine the way the it works.
The title of the work comes from the ancient Egyptian sekhet ialu, or “fields of reeds,” the traditional conception of paradise based on the reed fields of the Nile. Ialu evokes the sublimity of such a timeless, perfect world even as it insists that you examine the way the it works.
There’s math that would explain this stuff when you see it in the world. And in a simplified version, I’m capturing that essence. But it’s totally fake. It’s a bunch of wood and steel and plastic. Everything’s exposed. There’s something almost deceptive about that. . . it’s so exposed that there’s a trick happening. There’s still magic there, I think, even though you see everything that’s leading to the result.
— John Douglas Powers
