Jedd Novatt: The new Chillida?

Jed Novatt, Chaos Pamplona

Jedd Novatt's gravity-challenging sculptures — comprised of open structure piled upon open structure — are getting more and more ambitious, as these images of his recently installed Chaos Pamplona in Napa Valley, California clearly reveal. 

But unlike a lot of contemporary sculpture that is just made big for the sake of being big and in-your-face, Novatt's works carry a freight of implied danger that seems to intensify with the increase in scale.

His large-scale outdoor works are also impressive feats of engineering, yet happily they are feats that remain subtly subordinated to the aesthetic power of the work. 

The death of Spanish artist Eduardo Chillida (1924-2002) left a gaping hole on the horizon of 'proper' sculpture — sculpture that is concerned with those eternally important matters such as scale, volume, structure, balance, the dialectics of internal and external energy, and so on.

Coincidentally, Novatt — an American who lives and works in France — now makes much of his work in Spain. Perhaps unwittingly (but perhaps with conviction also) he is slowly taking up the challenge thrown down by his great Basque predecessor.

Novatt may be the rightful heir to Chillida's crown.

Read my introduction to the catalogue of Novatt's one-man show in 2008 at the Musée d'Art et d'Industrie André Diligent 'La Piscine' in Roubaix, northern France on the Home Page of The Sculpture Agency.