Broom (2014)

Broom
Aluminum cast
H90cm x W41cm x D5см
Broom is a life-size aluminium cast sculpture that represents a traditional domestic broom. The sculpture is suspended from the ceiling with a chain. The broom plant is native of Western Europe and at places it can potentially grow up to several meters in height. However the domestic use of it is restricted to the proportionate length of an arm and the combined distance to the floor, which is ideal for the act for sweeping, or brushing off. In the Western European tradition of canvas painting the broom thus becomes a substitution for a painting brush and the floor acts as a substitute for the canvas. The fact that the broom hangs floating above the floor indicates that the brush has been taken out of use, its function indefinitely suspended. This interplay of conceptual considerations in Çavuşoğlu's work inevitably and inadvertently relate directly to the first piece that Marcel Duchamp called "readymade", the unfamiliar snow shovel, which he encountered in a hardware store in Manhattan. Duchamp entitled the work "In Advance of the Broken Arm". In a dialogue with Duchamp's work Çavuşoğlu posits the argument that perhaps the "broken" arm has lost its ability to reach out to previous forms of expression like classical painting and moreover the size of the sculpture indicates the enormity of the task ahead. The handmade is no longer a sign of primary creation, and may we all dispense with it altogether, or should we be thinking otherwise?