2018 Catalogue Archive

Charles Harlan’s material choices recall a variety of artists, including Marcel Duchamp and his ready-mades, Land artists Robert Smithson and Nancy Holt, and Minimalists Donald Judd and Carl Andre. However, his sculptures and installations have a suburban banality that is inspired by Harlan’s Georgian roots and his mother’s hardware store. All of the materials in Barbed Wire could be found in such a store; a column of wire fencing is filled with the type of stones you would find in yards or medians in parking lots, topped with coils of barbed wire, a small wheel intended for a wagon or wheelbarrow, and speared through by a section of rebar. Harlan relates this body of work to Neolithic standing stones and ancient pillars, structures that were imbued with importance and ritual not always evident on their surface. A Graduate on NYU, Harlan has exhibited in the US and Europe.