Republic file photo Chaos I is shown in The Commons in downtown Columbus.
A truly chaotic event celebrating one of Columbus’ best known sculptures and its creator will be at The Commons this Saturday. In collaboration with the Bartholomew County Public Library and the Columbus Indiana Architectural Archives, the community is invited to commemorate Swiss artist Jean Tinguely’s 100th birthday and his “Chaos I” sculpture.
Tinguely, born in 1925, resided in Columbus in the mid-1970s, where he created his 7-ton kinetic sculpture titled “Chaos I” out of materials he gathered from local scrapyards. This piece, commissioned by J. Irwin and Xenia Miller and Clementine Tangeman in 1971, has gone on to be one of Tinguely’s most important U.S. works and a centerpiece of The Commons, according to the Columbus Visitors Center.
“A Chaotic Celebration” will have the screening of two short films made during the installation and fabrication of this large piece. According to CIAA archivist Tricia Gilson, one of these films was made in 1974 by filmmaker John Denny, while the other was made by a local cable channel called the Video Access Center.
“And most of these, we have not shown these films since 2016, and so we’re excited to be able to show the films because they both feature Jean Tinguely talking about what he was trying to do, what he was trying to achieve through this artwork and he talks about his experience of working in Columbus and what an ideal place Columbus was to make this sculpture,” Gilson said.
The films, each around 20 minutes, will also be made available online through the archives for the first time, Gilson said. After the two films are shown, “Chaos I” will be turned on to full speed for the remainder of the event.
Gilson said that although “Chaos I” serves as Tinguely’s most significant sculpture in the country, because people of Bartholomew County are surrounded everyday by great works of art such as this, she said people sometimes do not notice them.
Having a day to celebrate an artist who heavily contributed to the community’s legacy acts as a great opportunity for the community to come together and recognize its history, especially when it comes to hearing Tinguely himself discuss the unique qualities of Columbus that allowed him to create “Chaos I” here, she said.
“I mean it’s one thing if I say ‘oh, you know, he really liked it. He liked working in Columbus.’ But to hear the actual artist talk about his experiences and his appreciation for the technical skills of Columbus, its history in fabrication and engineering and taking that, he also talks about that it’s the engineers and it’s our history of industry and making things which has helped him create this work of art,” Gilson said. “And so he saw this opportunity for him to link his art with engineering in a way that perhaps he hadn’t been able to do before.”
The celebration will begin at 11 a.m. on Saturday and conclude at 12:30 p.m. For people wanting to just see “Chaos I” in motion, Gilson recommends arriving around 11:45 a.m.
