Timeless Symbols Pack Nari Ward’s Sculptures with Meaning

Since the early 1990s, the sculptor Nari Ward has used materials he finds on the street to explore consumer culture and race. The old upright brown piano sculpture, Spellbound, on view as part of his current solo show Breathing Directions at Lehmann Maupin Gallery, is covered in hundreds of keys attached to nails embedded in the instrument’s wood. “Spellbound is an earlier work that is the inspiration for the rest of the works,” explains Ward. “I decided to do a video initially because there were all these elements that I wanted to bring together without having to drag materials into my studio,” he says of the film shown on the back of the work that flashes symbols and sounds that call attention to American slavery and appear throughout the show.

“Spellbound is the bridge because all the works deals with material transformation specifically the references to the church and keys come up again in the main gallery.”