TERRY ADKINS

I consider my work to be a perpetual choir of beckoning gestures that transcribe the formal limitations of mere visual encounter… The relationship of music to art for me is an inverse muscular communion wherein sculpture is as transient as music and music approaches the visceral suggestion of matter.

—Terry Adkins

The mvet is a traditional West African string instrument, often played to accompany poetry, rituals, or philosophical discussion. Terry Adkins’s interpretation of this subject is deeply rooted in one of the principal aims of his practice: to forge an intuitive link between music and art, reversing the essential characteristics of each discipline to make sculpture more ethereal, and music more concrete. An homage to the legacy of African music throughout the world, Mvet Majestic II, like the instrument itself, transforms common materials into a reification of ancestral power and grace.

TERRY ADKINS
Mvet Majestic II
1989
Wood and acrylic
Overall:
80 x 36 x 2 inches (203.2 x 91.4 x 5.1 cm)
© Terry Adkins / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York
Courtesy of the Estate of Terry Adkins
Photo: Tom Powel Imaging