Brad Pitt has made his debut as a sculptor, in a group show at the Sara Hildén Art Museum in Tampere, Finland. The A-List actor’s artworks appear alongside those by the musician Nick Cave and the artist Thomas Houseago for the exhibition “We,” on view until January 15, 2023.
The largest pieces include a coffin-sized bronze box depicting hands, feet and faces attempting to break through the structure at various angles, and the plaster wall-hanging sculpture “Aiming At You I Saw Me But It Was Too Late This Time,” from 2020, which depicts a gun fight between eight figures.
Brad Pitt’s “Aiming At You I Saw Me But It Was Too Late This Time” (2020) Credit: deBranne Treu
The “Bullet Train” star reportedly began making ceramic art, following his turbulent divorce from the actress Angelina Jolie, in 2017.
In an emailed statement to The Art Newspaper, Pitt said of his artistic turn: “For me it’s about self reflection… It was born out of ownership over what I call a ‘radical inventory of the self’. And getting really brutally honest with me and taking account of those I may have hurt and the moments I’ve just gotten wrong.”
Pitt pictured at a premiere for “Bullet Train” on August 1, 2022 in Los Angeles. Credit: Matt Winkelmeyer/WireImage/Getty Images
“The Devil: A Life” is Cave’s first major body of visual work. It includes 17 individual pieces ranging between 6 and 19.5 inches tall, each hand-crafted, painted and glazed by Cave in England, between 2020 and 2022. Aesthetically the series nods to the artist’s interest in Victorian Staffordshire Flatback figurines, of which he is a collector.
A coffin-sized bronze box by Pitt. Credit: deBranne Treu
Both fledgling sculptors created these works in dialogue with the considerably more experienced Houseago. The British artist has been practicing for nearly three decades and showed work at the Whitney Biennial in 2010.
In Tampere, Houseago, who is better known as a sculptor, shows a number of paintings, a medium he began experimenting with in recent years. The works come from his large-scale “Visions” series that was made outdoors and was inspired by European symbolists including Norway’s Edvard Munch. He also shows new sculptures made from redwood and plaster that he made in response to works in the collection of the Sara Hildén Foundation, such as Alberto Giacometti’s sculpture “Woman on a Chariot” from 1943 to 1962.
Speaking of his decision to stage a collaborative show between himself, Cave and Pitt, Houseago said in the press statement: “I am not an I. I’m a WE!”
Top image: Nick Cave, Thomas Houseago and Brad Pitt at “We.”
Source: www.cnn.com