Specs

• Value: €12.000
• Material: Recycled Cardboard (recovered from the streets of Bologna)
• Dimension: 155cm x 120cm x 70cm
• Months: 8
• Hours: 200
• Title: You Are Secure
• Description: A large cardboard statue (bust) of a nude woman with her hands on her hips, head held confidently and eyes closed.
• Series: Second Chances (#5)

About the Piece

This was the fifth piece created by Chad in his studio in Bologna, starting in the winter of 2020 and finished in the spring of 2021. This piece was presented at the Lucca Biennale 2022. Like all the material for this project, every cardboard box recovered from the streets of Bologna has a story and a previous life — abandoned and given a second chance, This piece was the physical realization of a feeling Chad wanted to communicate, which was captured in many sketches of this subject, made years before Chad even thought of creating three dimensional cardboard statues. So it was exciting to see these sketches transformed into something physical and tactile. Like other pieces in this series it represents the creative process of reusing the material of the past to create a new life. (Learn more about the philosophy of the material for this series.)

This is Chad's favorite piece. It was the first sculpture Chad attempted at double the human scale, which proved to be a real challenge to learn how to maintain the right proportions when working so close to something so large. Chad continued to use razor cutting as a way to carefully shape and draw attention to the hands and face. He also continued to incorporate elements of motion to draw the viewer from the static anchored legs up into the scene. The material remains an important part of all these pieces, so it's important that many parts remain "unfinished" to give the viewer the moment of surprise when they realize what the sculpture is made of and let them guess the meaning behind it.