Form, Model, Syntax, Display (Terence Gower Sculpture Works)

Form, Model, Syntax, Display is the third monograph to be published on the work of Terence Gower, and the first to focus on the artist’s wider impact on twentieth-century urbanism.

Gower has invited seven writers from literature, art and the social sciences to contribute essays, each accompanied by documentation from the artist’s ten-year study of modern sculpture.
The design of this book is closely modelled on the 1960s Vision & Value book series [Braziller, New York], in which György Kepes invited contributors from wide-ranging disciplines to write on the same cultural or scientific theme.

Form, Model, Syntax, Display is published to coincide with the installation of Six Formes, a public artwork commissioned by the Région Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes, France.

Six Formes is the conclusion to a ten-year body of work that has taken the form of a hands-on investigation into the function of abstract art.

Gower is primarily concerned with investigating postwar architecture. His studies have focused on how architectural objects—specifically the abstract geometric solids that make up the building blocks of modern architecture—acquire, change, or lose meaning in the course of their existence. Similarly, abstract sculptures are invested with meaning by their creators, but that meaning changes throughout the life of the work. Unlike representational art, which puts readily recognizable imagery in the service of narrative or allegory, abstract art more readily stands for abstract ideas and ideological constructs. Its nonspecificity allows for changes of meaning and function during the life of a single artwork.