No title (chapel relief), 1985

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In No Title (chapel relief), Robert Therrien has taken a representation of a chapel and reduced it down to its essence: a narrow, low building lacking doors and windows, but with an exaggeratedly tall steeple. Made in 1985 with oil and wax on wood, this unadorned sculpture is nearly one-and-a-half feet across and four-and-a-half inches deep. Its spire-pointed tower creates a steeple that, at its base, spans the whole four-and-a-half-inch depth of the roof. It narrows as it rises straight up to an overall height of just under five feet. The scale is fantastical with the steeple being twice the height of the building. The sculpture is reddish-brown with some areas that are deep and dark, nearly black, and others that are brightly highlighted, showing off the natural wood grain. In places, the wood was etched into, in short, wispy lines that appear even darker when filled in with the oil and wax.

Besides having no doorway or windows, this artwork is not-so-representational in other ways. The steeple is off-center, positioned with one third of the roof to one side of it and two thirds to the other. And while the steeple narrows as it rises, the wood that comprises it makes the shape very simple; rather than a pointy spire being placed atop a tower on a small portion of the roof, the parts of this steeple are melded into one thing. It has four sides that taper to end in a thin, four-and-a-half-inch-long line instead of a sharp tip.

The wax gives the chapel a finish somewhere between matte and shiny. An occasional thick drip creates something almost like a seam down the wood, giving a bit of texture to an otherwise very smooth work of art.