“Stress” by Yoan Capote
2004
Concrete and bronze
250 x 60 x 60 cms
Edition : -
Collection : Karen and Robert Duncan- Lincoln, Nebraska, USA
This piece was inspired by the artist’s personal experience of grinding his teeth as a result of stress; but the work is also a monument to the collective experience of contemporary urban life. The artist went to a clinic in Havana and took the molds of teeth of several anonymous people; he reproduced those teeth in bronze and conjoined the molds in a linear fashion. The bronze teeth bear the weight of each 500 pound concrete block. The sculpture symbolically uses the notion of gravity, material and its weight to create the sculpture and the idea of burden; it also examines the meaning of teeth as an important part of the body used to establish identification or the identity of a person.
