Above: Jim Hodges, With Liberty and Justice for All (A Work in Progress), 2014–2016. Installation rendering for The Contemporary Austin – The Moody Rooftop at the Jones Center, 2016. Artwork © the artist. Image courtesy the artist.
Jim Hodges sculpture, Liberty and Justice For All (A Work in Progress), was installed in December 2016 on the rooftop of the Contemporary Austin. The museum installed the illuminated sculpture of seven-foot-tall letters along two sides the newly updated rooftop of the museum downtown Jones Center venue at Congress Ave. and Seventh — just a few blocks from the Texas State Capital. During the day, the letters’ iridescent, mirrored surfaces oscillate between blues, purples, oranges, and pinks, reflecting the environment around them. At dusk, the letters remain visible, lit from within to transform the work into a magnificent sculpture of color and light.
As curator Heather Pesanti points out, Hodges devised a creative strategy of using language in a profound but simple manner. Writes Pesanti; “Hodges’s response was not heavy-handed politicism but disarmingly simple, sometimes beautiful, and seemingly innocuous objects and installations that often engaged the viewer in an immersive or even playful manner while serving as Trojan horses for powerful political messages.”
To read more about the sculpture, click here.