On the Cover:
To honor both recipients of the 2025 Lifetime Achievement Award, this issue features one of two covers.
Albert Paley, Mystery Table (detail), 1993. Formed, fabricated, and painted steel, and stainless steel with marble top, 59.25 x 104 x 18.5 in. Photo: Paley Studios Archive
Jaume Plensa, Invisibles (Rui Rui & Laura) (detail), 2018. Stainless steel, 650 x 400 x 500 cm. each element. Photo: © Juan Gavilán
Editor’s Letter:
In art, achievement comes in many forms, and in this issue, we highlight a number of them. Two of the features celebrate the work of the ISC’s 2025 Lifetime Achievement in Contemporary Sculpture Award winners. In one essay, Paul Greenhalgh situates Albert Paley within a particular Modernist decorative tradition, one grounded in humanism: “Paley’s jewelry changed the body; his sculpture changes the city. In this sense, his sculpture is jewelry for the city, art that can lift urban life in the way that jewelry does for the individual body.” In another, Joseph Antenucci Becherer likens the monumental, often public-turned faces of the much-loved Jaume Plensa to the idealized portraits of the early Renaissance. Erwin Wurm, in an interview here, discusses the influence of Greek and Roman sculpture on his uncanny, amusing, absurd, often distorted, and always thoughtful works. Not that the impulse for sculptural achievement always springs from art history. Aaron T Stephan frequently twists or exaggerates commonplace items like a streetlamp or guardrail for his public sculptures. The aim is magic. “I would rather focus on being an alchemist than a fabricator,” he says. The collaborations of Courtney Smith and Iván Navarro, who work together as Konantü, are meant to elude commodification. Bringing participants together with structures or objects, the duo enact open-ended experiments meant less for an audience than for those participating. To produce meaningful work that escapes the market seems like a magical achievement in itself. —Daniel Kunitz, Editor-in-Chief
