Fact and Fantasy Converge in the Art of Steven Pestana

Pestana approaches the measure of the world as both scientific and aesthetic, objective and subjective. “Just as we might gauge length with a ruler, we measure human experiences, such as emotions, through concepts and degrees,” he told Artsy. “We describe situations as ‘perfect’ or ‘beautiful’ with no quantifiable way to understand what this means.” With “Geometer,” he attempts to bridge this gap, providing us with tools to adequately capture and process this duality. 

At the center of the exhibition is a sculptural installation titled Geometer (2015), consisting of a hollow, lifesize headless cast figure lined with gold. He kneels on one knee with his hand on a giant crystal-like rock, while in his other hand he clutches a pole topped with a framed glass etching of a what looks like a celestial observatory. Resembling a lone explorer, or perhaps an astronaut planting a flag on the moon, the figure could also be a self-portrait of the artist, serving to remind us of the blurry relationship between discovery and creativity, fact and fantasy. Pestana questions the possibility of ever really knowing our world if human observation and knowledge is limited by the methods we’ve created to study it. “Our tools—systems and devices of measurement, for example—circumscribe our horizons of thought,” he explained.

Pestana has constructed several “tools” of his own, incorporating historic styles and motifs into what he calls “speculative reimaginings.” The sculpture True North, for instance, consists of a lathe-turned, a richly stained wood spindle whose Renaissance-style antiquity belies its contemporary invention. A row of steel cables fans out from the wood post, suggesting a tool for nautical or cosmological exploration. In the delicate, sculptural “Archæometric Reckoners” series, meanwhile, Pestana combines knotting techniques that Incan tribes and ancient Egyptians used to record tribal life and land measurements, respectively.