The “Eye 2011” is part of a capsule study series of sculptures that began in 2006, in Boone North Carolina, USA. In the capsule study series, my strategy is to invoke the aura, the fourth and fifth dimension of an object. The visible physical dimension in artworks also invokes curiosity as to what lies beneath the surface. In the study of optics, the eye processes tons of images using large amounts of pixelated optical data carefully and overtly arranged, and transmitted to the brain to interpret. The brain, using the duct known as the optic nerve, thus guides us consciously away from danger, towards care and love.
The “eye 2011”’ is a sculpture with nails that travelled through different seaports of the world to arrive at the Lagos seaport. These nails are extracted at Amu Timber market where nails and pinewood cases part ways, only to meet again as a collectible in a collectors’ home as furniture or sculptures. The small nails of the “eye 2011” symbolically represent pixelated optical data, the twisted rods or rib bars of the optic nerves, and the stainless steel ring is the brain that cyclically process information.
Regardless of the location where it is mounted, the “eye 2011” will continue to play the dual roles of seeing the activity around it and being the object of the gaze. The “eye 2011” measures 81 inches in diameter and weighs 61 kg. It is left in its rusted state as a testimonial to latent energy but frozen in a capsule with a finish made out of a combination of sanding sealer and lacquer.
