Thomas Houseago Masks (Pentagon)

For six weeks in spring 2015, Thomas Houseago’s new commission Masks (Pentagon), featuring five large sculptural masks forming a pentagonal space that visitors may enter, is on view in Rockefeller Plaza. From within, the mask’s eyes create windows that frame views of the landscape and skyscrapers of Midtown Manhattan. Thomas Houseago: Masks (Pentagon) is free to the public and on view April 28–June 12, 2015 at Rockefeller Center between 49th and 50th Streets. The exhibition is organized by Public Art Fund and Tishman Speyer.

Designed specifically for this plaza, Masks (Pentagon) consists of five masks ranging in height from about 14½ to 16½ feet, each of which reflects a different approach to the stylized representation of the human face, from clearly recognizable to highly abstracted. Standing vertically with their edges connected at key points, the monumental elements bring Houseago’s striking sculptural language into a dialogue with public space and architectural scale. As each colossal face looks out toward the surrounding cityscape, the spaces between them become “doorways” that give access to an interior “room.”

The five masks, which were cast from clay in industrial-strength synthetic plaster, stand on a stepped base made from massive beams of unfinished redwood. The back of each element of the sculpture reveals the artist’s method of construction—a grid-like armature of rebar inlaid with hemp and plaster. The resulting five-sided form evokes an archaic temple, the ritual function of which has been lost in time.

Houseago creates monumental, often figurative sculptures that combine classical and modernist references and techniques. With a handmade sensibility, he utilizes materials from carved wood, clay, plaster, and bronze to steel rods, concrete, and burlap to create works that intentionally reveal traces of their making. In Masks (Pentagon), planar surfaces like the cheeks or forehead of a face adjoin articulated features like eyebrows or a nose, creating an interplay between flat and three-dimensional elements. The artist’s hand—as well as the footprints of his young daughter—is visible in many of the cast surfaces, while the roughhewn reverse of each face bears metal elements that form connections between the masks. Evoking a visceral response, these abstracted yet iconic faces convey both an elemental sense of power and an open vulnerability.

Thomas Houseago: Masks (Pentagon) is curated by Nicholas Baume.

Thomas Houseago (b. 1972, Leeds, England) lives and works in Los Angeles. His solo exhibitions include As I Went Out One Morning at Storm King Art Center, Mountainville, New York (2013); Thomas Houseago: Striding Figure/Standing Figure at Galleria Borghese, Rome (2013); Where the Wild Things Are and Thomas Houseago: Hermaphrodite at Sainsbury Centre for the Visual Arts, Norwich, England (2012); The World Belongs to You at Palazzo Grassi, Venice (2011); The Beat of the Show at Inverleith House, Edinburgh (2011); What Went Down at Modern Art Oxford, England (2010, traveled to Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, England; Museum Abteiberg, Mönchengladbach, Germany; and Centre International d’Art et du Paysage de l’Ile de Vassivière, France, through 2011); and The Artist’s Museum at MOCA, Los Angeles (2010). His work was included in the Whitney Biennial 2010, Whitney Museum of Art, New York, City, as well as Public Art Fund’s group exhibition Statuesque in City Hall Park the same year. He earned his BA from Central Saint Martins College of Art, London in 1994, and studied at De Ateliers, Amsterdam, from 1994–96. Houseago is represented by Gagosian Gallery, Hauser + Wirth, and Xavier Hufkens Gallery.