About Melted Away
“Nothing beside remains…” – Percy Shelley, Ozymandias,1818
For artists Nora Ligorano and Marshall Reese the medium of ice is the perfect material to sculpt the seemingly invisible, yet strongly affecting forces, transforming society in this immaterial age. The artists create “temporary monuments” of sculptures of words carved in ice. Ligorano and Reese’s artworks engage the public provoking discourse and conversation about the world we all live in.
When LigoranoReese install their site-specific sculptures during national events in the United States, they immerse themselves and their projects in the political theater of the moment. In 2008, they unveiled ice sculptures of the word Democracy at the political conventions in Denver and St. Paul. On the 79th anniversary of the Great Depression, in the shadow of a global financial meltdown they erected the word Economy in ice in front of the New York State Supreme Court in Foley Square. And since then they have installed sculptures of words at the Republican and Democratic National Conventions in 2012 and 2016 and at demonstrations.
In the hands of LigoranoReese, ice sculptures become conceptual structures changing over time, serving as physical and virtual stages for public interaction. People easily approach the sculptures. They touch them with their hands, sensing them shift from solid to liquid, as if the sculptures themselves were succumbing to a fever’s heat. The artists stream the entire lifecycle of the sculpture live, later expanding the footage into a documentary: viewers are filmed and featured in short video segments on the internet. Streamed over the internet, the sculptures take on other dimensions online.
The words’ beautifully frozen presence witnessed in the beginning is an elusive, fragile one. LigoranoReese’s temporary monuments are not meant to advertise permanence. In 2008, after eight years of the Bush Administration, the Patriot Act, Guantanamo, and the War on Terror, the prospects for democracy were hardly sanguine — thus the perfect time for a Democracy ice sculpture to disappear. That same year, as the investment bank Lehman Brothers became insolvent, their ice sculpture of the word Economy in lower Manhattan drastically captured the moment of global financial decay with crystalline clarity.
Creating installations like these may seem a simple process. Truck the ice in, set it up, watch it melt away. In reality, the preparations are detailed and highly complex. When created for a specific event, the installations possess commemorative, monumental qualities along with a corresponding sense of despair as they vanish into thin air.
The artists seek to breakthrough accepted interpretations and responses. Current events may indicate certain political trends, but witnessing Democracy or The Future disappear before one’s eyes transforms those inferences into tangible reality. LigoranoReese’s monuments are perfect markers for the opening decades of the 21st century – first, democracy is broken, next the economy is ruined, then the middle class disappears. And hope for the future may have already evaporated.
