John Chamberlain · chrome expressionism
John Chamberlain - BISHOPBUDD - EMPIREMICROPHONE - 2009
From 1 April to 21 May 2022, Hauser & Wirth presents "John Chamberlain. Reclaimed", an exhibition of five sculptures created from abandoned vintage cars found near Bern, Switzerland.
Source: Hauser & Wirth. Image: John Chamberlain, BISHOPBUDD, 2009. Painted and chromed steel 193 x 224.2 x 102.2 cm © 2022. Fairweather & Fairweather LTD / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. Courtesy of John Chamberlain Estate and Hauser & Wirth. John Chamberlain, EMPIREMICROPHONE, 2009. Painted and chromed steel, 164.5 x 87 x 69.9 cm. © 2022 Fairweather & Fairweather LTD / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. Courtesy of John Chamberlain Estate and Hauser & Wirth. Photo: Jon Etter
John Chamberlain (1927-2011) was one of the key figures in twentieth-century American sculpture and, along with David Smith, the artist who best brought the principles of Abstract Expressionism into three dimensions. His most famous works are those created from abandoned cars, a practice he began in the late 1950s and continued until a few months before his death. His native America, the country that made the automobile a fundamental part of its "American dream", offered the sculptor plenty of material for his works, car graveyards where the remains of Chevrolets, Buicks and Cadillacs awaited a second chance.
Hauser & Wirth, which has been representing the artist's estate since 2019, is now presenting in Switzerland an exhibition of sculptures by the artist, created from 1940s and ’50s automobiles that were salvaged near Bern. Hauser & Wirth explains in a press release: “In 2009, Chamberlain came across an auction of vintage cars collected by the Messerli family in Kaufdorf, Bern. Described as an ‘auto graveyard’, the empty shells of vintage cars were stacked in endless rows and consumed by the forest, left to the unsparing will of nature for almost 80 years. Along with friend, collector, and collaborator Ernest Mourmans, Chamberlain acquired the bodies of dozens of 1940s and ’50s automobiles, ‘yanking motors out of them, and the transmissions and the brakes and the suspensions, the glass, all the wheels, the upholstery’. Chamberlain was particularly drawn to American-made cars as they had separate chassis, which could be easily removed, leaving the shells to be conquered. The artist then worked with crushers and other tools to compact the large sheets of the remaining metal into entirely new, expressionist forms”.
“Welding bumpers and fenders around and within the crushed structures of metal, Chamberlain boldly challenges all notions of balance, colour, form, and volume. Works such as ‘BISHOPBUDD’ (2009) defy gravity as a crown of black, white and chrome strips sits atop a dense trunk of painted steel. ‘EMPIREMICROPHONE’ (2009) features the curvilinear forms of bumpers in bold contrast to the crumpled, timeworn steel balanced above. By employing a limited colour palette of black and white punctuated with reflective chrome, Chamberlain renders the density of steel into something that is seemingly weightless and fluid, elegant and powerful”.

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