I mondi di Charles Simonds

Charles Simonds (New York, 1945) creates little fragile worlds out of clay. He uses the same strategy as graffiti writers do, he 'adopts' abandoned buildings, crumbling structures or private homes. When he's chosen his right ravine, he fills it with a tiny piece of fantastic architecture. Most of his work can be found in New York but some of it is also scattered through Berlin, Paris, Venice and Shanghai. This unlawful operation of placing archaic structures inside empty buildings waiting to be demolished, with often no public or audience to document their actual existence, has resulted in the complete disappearance of these delicate and secret sculptures.
The focal point of his artistic activity lies in the research of archaic civilizations. All of his sculptures represent sentences, excerpts that speak of man, of landscapes and building. Simonds explains that these creations belong to "little people" as he calls them. He even found appropriate to create three different races, with an architectural method corresponding to each one. But for some reason, these "little people" don't exist anymore. Maybe they've become extinct or perhaps they've abandoned their lands. And now we, the archeologists from another world, can only study and be marveled by these abandoned buildings. Simond's sculptures belong to a primitive and childish universe. The land is often deserted and hostile, the buildings often recall places of cult and religion. Even though there is no explicit depiction of a specific architectural style, there is a constant reference to our long buried civilizations like Mesapotamia or more recent ones like the native Americans. Simonds digs into our common past searching for archaic shapes and primitive forces, he compels us to step back and to look at our contemporary society and the beliefs and principles that uphold it.