Tom Scicluna: Domain
January 14th - April 10th, 2021-
Domain, installation view
Nina Johnson is proud to present Domain, an exhibition of recent sculptures by Tom Scicluna, opening on January 14th and on view through March 6th, 2021. For this series, Scicluna will install nine sculptures constructed using readymade materials on the gallery’s back garden patio.
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33155 (1), 2021, gabion cages, terrazzo, linoleum and concrete, 20 x 74 x 78 in.
Tom Scicluna is interested in images—the ways they dictate our interactions and how they can become material. Advertisements, stock photos, and news images all have an indexical relationship to the physical things they describe. But when they transform from object or site into a finite object like an image, something uncanny happens.
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33155 (1), 2021, gabion cages, terrazzo, linoleum and concrete, 20 x 74 x 78 in. (Detail view)
This process informs Scicluna’s paradoxically minimalist design, yet profoundly complex sculptures and site-based works. For Domain, Scicluna tapped into three specific sources: commercially manufactured materials, discarded construction-related debris, and found online images.
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Domain, installation view
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Domain, installation view
In the past, Scicluna has investigated notions of the site with a hyper-local focus, often gathering found objects from within a one block radius or less. For Domain, he cast a wider net to engage South Florida as a region.
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33009, 2021, gabion cages, plastic and concrete pavers, 20 x 40 x 40 in.
As referenced in the sculptures’ zip code titles (and with consideration to a series of advertised images), Scicluna traveled to various locations to pick up and haul away loads of concrete, granite, roofing tiles, and other building and residential supplies listed for free online. He then assembled them into rectangular structures within gabion cages typically used for retaining walls and residential stone fences.
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33190, 2021, gabion cages and concrete pavers, 9 x 40 x 40 in.
Removed from their original indexical relationship, the sculptures also speak to the commodification of space. Visually austere yet saturated with the objects’ histories, the sculptures challenge the relationship between an image and the site it represents, as well as systems of circulation, exchange, and value.
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33155 (2), 2021, gabion cage and cinder blocks, 16 x 60 x 20 in.
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Domain, installation view
Oscillating between disposable digital entities and reified material form, and utilizing everyday construction-related materials and debris, Scicluna’s project invokes Robert Smithson’s theories of the site and non-site. However, in his hands, these discarded goods take on new meaning and pose questions about waste, worth, and the life cycle of images and objects.
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Domain, installation view
Through stacks of composite stone, clay, sand, sometimes pierced with metal, and all wrapped in steel cages, Scicluna challenges his viewers to reconsider our preconceptions about the images we consume and the spaces that we inhabit.
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33062, 2021, gabion cage, concrete and steel, 20 x 40 x 20 in.
Tom Scicluna is a Miami-Based artist. Recent shows and projects include: Domain, Nina Johnson, Miami, FL; 2019 Atlanta Biennial: A thousand tomorrows, Atlanta Contemporary, Atlanta, GA; Some Aesthetic Decisions: Centennial Celebration of Marcel Duchamp’s Fountain, NSU Museum of Art Fort Lauderdale, FL; and Climate Sync, a public artwork realized in conjunction with Miami-Dade Art in Public Places and installed at Oolite Arts, Miami Beach, FL. His work is in the permanent collections of ICA Miami, NSU Art Museum Fort Lauderdale and the Pérez Art Museum Miami.