Thaddeus Mosley’s monumental freestanding sculptures are crafted with the felled trees of Pittsburgh’s urban canopy, via the city’s Forestry Division; wood from local sawmills; and reclaimed building materials. With influences ranging from Isamu Noguchi to Constantin Brâncuși – and the Bamum, Dogon, Baoulé, Senufo, Dan, and Mossi works of his personal collection – Mosley’s sculptures mark an inflection point in the history of American abstraction.
'My woods and stones and I generate themes together,' Mosley says. These 'sculptural improvisations,' as he calls them, exercise a rhythmic abstraction, informed by the modernist tradition of jazz. Mosley carves with the spontaneity of a jazz composer: each fissure and groove in his hewed compositions represents an almost-audible warble. He frequently sculpts as an ekphrastic response to music.
312 pages, 18.4 x 22.9 cm, hardcover, KARMA (New York).