Ran across this sculpture in NYC’s City Hall Park yesterday and thought it would be of interest on this forum. I assume the artist (James Angus) has taken a computer model of a tractor and then ‘skewed’ it and then had it fabricated. Curiously, it reads as quite a bit more extreme in real life than the photograph shows - maybe the eye corrects the image a bit when looking at the picture.
Probably only someone who has done some computer modeling will fully ‘get’ it.
Upon entering the gallery, visitors are immediately greeted with James Angus’s John Deere Model D, an iconic tractor produced in the early years of America’s iconic industrial producer of farming implements. Flipped on its side and slightly skewed from its original form, the work shows a startling awareness of its own position in the digital/physical interplay. Any attempt to capture the work on camera confounds later viewers, leaving them wondering if the photograph has been manipulated digitally. Further, Angus parallels the increasingly calculated nature of contemporary agribusiness and food engineering with agriculture’s traditional imagery and definitively physical roots. By warping a classic symbol of food production, he creates a symbol of the agricultural ideal, carrying vast cultural weight while remaining relatively useless in the contemporary era. (emphasis mine)
I can’t help but think of the tractor tipping scene in Cars:
[quote=“arail, post:1, topic:1237”]
Ran across this sculpture in NYC’s City Hall Park yesterday and thought it would be of interest on this forum.[/quote]
didn’t realize you’re a local 
(or just visiting?)
i’m supposed to go down there sunday… i’ll make sure to check it out. thanks