Wendy Klemperer

These pieces were made from metal I found in construction sites in Brooklyn. The raw material contained a tortured energy from being wrenched out of the concrete it was imbedded in. I tried to convert this energy into animal forms that expressed a sense of struggle. I wanted them to be rising out of the earth as though life were emerging from urban detritus. Many thanks to: Lara Cressman, Julius Kozlowski, Bruce Martin, Chris Raymond, and Chris Schiavo.

This is a fallen horse, something derived from childhood collections of race photos in which steeplechasers crash upsidedown over Grand National fences, or Westerns with horses inevitably spiralling and falling into the dust. The image is poignant, tragic, and sometimes funny. It takes the traditional, glorified horse, and turns it on its head. It is a monument opended, and also a figurative idea made abstract, in the sense that the conventional outline is unrecognizable.