SLO Reporter

On April 15, the San Luis Obispo Museum of Art (SLOMA) in partnership with the City of San Luis Obispo will unveil David, a sculpture by Adam Parker Smith, on the Museum’s lawn in downtown San Luis Obispo.

The sculpture is the newest public art piece brought to the community by San Luis Obispo’s Public Art Program and replaces Camille Hoffman’s installation Storied Waters: Dreams of Banyanihan.

“The City knows that public art brings our community’s public spaces to life, helping make San Luis Obispo a place where people want to live, work and visit and providing everyone with the opportunity to experience different mediums and different artists,” said San Luis Obispo Mayor Erica A. Stewart. “We are proud to partner with SLOMA to bring new public art pieces like this one. Parker Smith’s work challenges the norm with beauty and strength.”

Adam Parker Smith’s sculpture features the familiar subject of Gian Lorenzo Bernini’s 17th century sculpture of David, but here compressed into a cube the size of one cubic meter. Parker Smith is known for creating works that are often irreverent and funny, and with this work, he plays with the iconic form of classical sculpture, giving it a modern twist.

“David feels like the perfect sculpture to install right now, especially in the context of the other sculptures this lawn has hosted,” said SLOMA curator Emma Saperstein. “We opened this series with Mamma Mobius by Mark di Suvero – an iconic piece by a world-renowned artist. We then showcased a work by Camille Hoffman that emphasized her site-specific and place-based research practice. After seeing such markedly different expressions of sculpture, Adam’s piece now offers the opportunity for the community to question and consider what monuments are – and deconstruct our thinking around them, an idea that he is exploring in this very work.”

Parker Smith works across various mediums, including sculpture, video, assemblage, and collage, and is known for his contemporary takes on ancient forms. David comes out of a recent series called “Crush” where the artist turned iconic classical sculptures on their head. Working with a team of master carvers, Parker Smith recreated the sculpture of David using a 3D modeling program, and then compressed it into a compact cube, carved out of a Carrara marble block. The resulting work is at once familiar and distinctly unexpected.

In addition to his interest in playing with iconic forms, with this work Parker Smith also upends the feelings of adoration and awe that many of these classical works inspire. With David, the artist takes an idealized, perfectly proportioned, figure, and collapses him, interrupting the heroic nature of the form, and in consequence changing our relationship with the sculpture, opening space for a new dialogue.

SLOMA will present David through April 2024. The work will be accessible to all on the Museum’s lawn.

Original source can be found here.