Salisbury, N.C., (Friday, Oct. 7, 2016) – Asheville, N.C. sculptor Robert Winkler has won Best in Show in the 2016 Salisbury Sculpture Show “Discover What’s Outside.”
Winkler’s winning piece, “Moving Along,” has been on display in Salisbury since April 1, and will remain at its temporary location in the Visitors’ Center parking lot in the 100 block of North Lee St. until early January 2017. The piece reflects the sculptor’s creative style based on mathematics, movement and repetition. Winkler’s artist’s statement describes his objective to manipulate volume, mass and balance to create a sense of movement. Through precision geometry, he creates animated forms that engage the viewer with the power and illusion of movement.
Winkler has exhibited several times in Salisbury, winning first place in the inaugural 2009 exhibit with his large wood piece “Look Homeward Angles,” and again in 2014 for “Salisbury Foursome” at I-85, Exit 76. “Foursome” was eventually purchased by the Convention and Visitors Bureau to be part of the city’s permanent collection.
Winkler’s work also may be seen in permanent public art collections around the southeast, including in Durham, Charlotte and Charleston, S.C.
This year’s sculpture judge was Kelly Bennett, who staffs the newly established Winston-Salem Forsyth County Public Art Commission. Bennett, a former photo- journalist with an art history degree, said he loved how “Moving Along” achieved the sense of so much motion by repeating the same geometric shapes in different ways. At once it could resemble the diminishing action of a bouncing ball, and then a tornado. To Bennett, the repetitive shapes also represent the motion of time – with the rusting metal as an ideal communicator of passing time.