Hayden Beck Gallery

Chicago-based sculptor Josh Garber creates organic, playful and intriguing sculptures using welded steel, aluminum and brass. While working in either a large, nearly monumental scale or producing smaller more intimately proportioned pieces, Garber captures feelings of spontaneity and weightless volume. Describing his own process he explains “My work is about interpreting gestures through mappings of coordinates. It is very influenced by digital pixilation which dissects images with thousands of dots. Similarly, I use thousands of aluminum bars to map and then construct each piece.”

He notes the simultaneous presence of stillness and movement, simplicity and complexity, repetition and spontaneity. Emphasizing how opposing elements can work in concert to explore something else; namely the sculptural expression of human gestures. Garber explains that the “interplay between static industrial materials and fluid organic forms; the requirement for elemental simple objects in the construction of a greater complex whole; the need for continuous controlled repetition to generate a spontaneous free sculpture…These elements are resolved through a time absorbing meditation that permits me to present my expression of our human relationships with each other. Not only is the shape and form informative, an added dimension is its tactility as it may be explored through touch.”