Theme 3: Mutations and Matter

Kirk was looking for ways that the physicality of sculpture could evoke energy and flux.

In his Office Serieslithographis, he intensified the agitated feeling of his businessmen through a series of dots and dashes. Features of the face, particularly eyes, began to multiply, suggesting a constant shifting caused by apprehension or confusion.

In many of the figures of this period, the gestures and poses became increasingly primitive and visceral. More and more, the figures were reduced to animated shadows, becoming enigmatic, contemporary pictographs. Even more mysterious was the way in which they were pentrated and illuminated by holes. These holes seem not only to question the nature of the figures’ physical solidity, but assumptions about human identity itself.