William Harby
born 1927, Scarsdale, NY
works in Belmont, MA
Marble Reflections, 1999, marble, polished stainless steel, 3'4" x 20'9" x 13'6"; Lent by the Artist; Site-specific installation
William Harby is both a painter and sculptor. In many of his site-specific outdoor installations he makes use of unexpected combinations of materials to play with issues of perception, site, and materiality. In Marble Reflections, the artist surfaced various faces of hand cut marble slabs with polished steel mirrors. These mirrors reflect the sky, the ground, the marble slabs, and other mirrors to create a complex visual puzzle that melds art, nature, and the viewer. His use of marble, and the scattered arrangement of the stones, are intentional references to architectural ruins of antiquity like Stonehenge or the Parthenon. Gutting the substance of the stones with immaterial reflections stands as a metaphor for the fleeting nature of art, power, and civilization.
