Exhibition: Hammered, Gallery 27, Cork Street, London, until March 27 2010
Using more than 50,000 steel nails to express the human form is not an easy task, yet Marcus Levine manages to depict every muscle tone and contour in works showing at his new show on London’s famous Cork Street.
The Yorkshire-born sculptor's artistic background is no surprise (he rubbed shoulders with Damien Hirst at Jacob Kramer Art College), but his long road to the acclaimed position he is in today has been anything but predictable.
Levine's ambition of using nails to bring his visions to life has been 15 years in the making after first working as a TV graphic designer, and then joining the family business.
He moved to Budapest in 2004 to pursue his dream of making modern art by hammering nails into white wooden panels at different heights and distances from one another.
This exhibition will include sculptures of male and female models and a sculptured portrait of two children's faces. Yet even after completion his artworks are often subject to change, as lighting conditions remain integral to creating various shadings and tone.
David's Children (27,000 Nails). © pagetbaker.com, saatchi-gallery.co.uk
With the majority of his pieces depicting the human body, Levine is aware that he is using an interesting material for such delicate outlines, believing that "the interplay between the rigid, angular nails and the soft curves of the human torso" is "fantastically striking."
"From morning sun to evening sun the shadows across the sculptures change and affect the contrast and, by altering artificial lighting, the sculptures can appear as light as a pencil sketch or as dark as a charcoal life drawing," Levine laments, feeling he has perfected the techniques after four years of sculpture.
Each new work seems to push his boundaries further, creating increasingly dynamic interpretations of figures which are notoriously difficult to portray.
Open 10am-6pm (4pm Saturday). Admission free. Gallery 27, 27 Cork Street, London. Call 020 7287 8408 or visit the Gallery online.
