Willard Boepple

“Willard Boepple has never been a figure sculptor but he is acutely sensitive to the proportions of things made for human use. Most of his works take as their point of departure the dimensions of functional objects: the intervals of the rungs of a ladder, scaled to an average step, or the dimensions of a shelf designed to hold things scaled to the hand. Our subliminal awareness of these relationships humanizes Boepple’s work. It’s the opposite of the discomfort we feel when a doorknob or a countertop is at the wrong height; part of the pleasure of Boepple’s sculptures is their tacit sense of “rightness,” a built-in sense of harmony caused by comfortable – the best sense – proportions” (Karen Wilken, The Hudson Review, 2015).

Boepple’s work is represented in the permanent collections of The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; The Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; The National Gallery of Kenya, Nairobi, and the Storm King Art Center, New York, among others. Recent one person shows include MASS MoCA, North Adams, MA; Architects Gallery, New York, NY; Broadbent Gallery, London, UK; Aleph Contemporary, London, UK; and Lori Bookstein Fine Art, New York, NY. Special awards and honours include National Academy Election, 2010 and Royal Society of British Sculptors, London Elected Fellow, 2001. This is the artist’s second solo show with Pamela Salisbury Gallery.