Ronald Jones

Untitled (DNA fragment from Human Chromosome 13 carrying Mutant Rb Genes, also known as Malignant Oncogenes that trigger rapid Cancer Tumorigenesis), 1989

bronze (black patina), edition 3/3
68 x 15 in. (top), 11 x 9 in. (base)
Courtesy of Rachel and Jean-Pierre Lehmann and Metro Pictures

This sculpture may seem familiar. It shadows a particular sculpture by Jean Arp. But my sculpture takes hostage Arpís intuitive search for a higher modern form, a utopic or perfect order and perverts it into something distressed and dying, a promise unkept to the culture at large. This bronze literally depicts the genetic structure of cancer. It aspires to be beautiful in a way that is aligned with the idea of beauty as an overwhelming and powerful tool. Dave Hickey has written: ìThe task of these figures of beauty was to enfranchise the audience and acknowledge its powerñto designate a territory of shared values between the image and its beholder and, then, in this territory, to argue the argument by valorizing the pictureís problematic content.î Hickeyís words do double service here, calling out the way in which the beauty of this sculpture foregrounds disease as a political subject, a subject that reminds us all of what it means to be dispossessed in our culture.

From a lecture given at the Yale School of Art, 1989