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COREY MCCORKLE
Born LaCrosse (USA), 1969. Lives in New York
Scale model of three-part blind passage, showing the inter-twining spiral staircase in the tallest minaret in the world, Selimiye, Turkey, 2006
Thermo-moulded acrylic, 7.6 x 182 cm
Courtesy of the artist and Maccarone inc., New York
(Produced for the exhibition)
“The model functions as both a kind of gauge and an allegory, gathering speed like an internal screw which unites the cosmic and the terrestrial - a sort of skyscraper of vertigo and ecstasy. This object serves at the same time as model for contemplation – constructed especially for ceremonial accessions – and as a practical guide for a future project in the Maccarone Gallery”. This work is a transparent model of the spiral staircase designed by the Ottoman architect Mimar Sinan in 1569 for the minaret of the mosque at Edirne on the Turco-Bulgarian border. The uniqueness of this building, apart from its height, is its three internal staircases which, though cleverly entwined, remain completely self-contained. Closed to the public, these staircases give access to one of the three balconies used for the call to prayer, one of which is at a height of more than 60 metres. McCorkle, who is interested in the ornamental aspects of modernity, has created here an ancestral sculptural structure with an air of modernity - that of glass architecture. Its transparency reveals, with the subtle and seductive play of light of a prism, the almost choreographic internal system of these three invisible pathways. Yet, at the same time, they remain completely impenetrable.
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