Alongside The Shield of Achilles paintings, Alexander constructed a sculptural installation of enormous COR-TEN steel rings, each weighing two tonnes. They lie at the centre of the exhibition, settled and deliberate, suggesting a constellation brought down to earth.
They resemble the remnants of an abandoned divine mechanism, jettisoned bearings from a celestial engine, invisible escutcheons, or vast cosmic lenses through which souls might once have been divined. Dislodged from purpose, they sit heavy with aftermath, fallen, discarded, half-buried in time.
These forms, perhaps built for orbit and order, have oxidised into silence. Their weathering steel, engineered to rust with uncanny uniformity, becomes a planetary scar, a surface that remembers heat, descent, and the cost of nearing the source.
Craters, shields, broken halos, whatever they once were, these discs now settle with the presence of ancient stone circles, as if drawing us back to a deeper ground, before ascent or catastrophe were even imagined. They carry the aura of a technology older than history, enduring beyond its collapse.
Cryptically titled Shield, the installation stages a contradiction. Vast rings that cannot defend. Their centres, where protection should exist, remain open. They draw a circle around nothing, guarding only the void.
Exhibited:
A Blacker Gold , Haunch of Venison, Berlin.
