Sharp, angular metallic planes balance on low concrete pedestals in front of you — Ex Stasis, by American artist Richard Lippold, on the Marquette campus in downtown Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Up close the work reads as an arrangement of sharp, angular metallic planes, each one caught and balanced on a low concrete pedestal. The abstraction resists a single reading: its planes lean and converse with one another, catching light and shadow in ways that change as you move.
This is a campus piece but it carries an urban presence, set near Marquette's Haggerty Museum of Art and visible to students and visitors passing through. It also carries history in place: it used to be the centerpiece of the west courtyard of the Alumni Memorial Union, so you can still sense how it was meant to anchor space and invite circulation around it. Stand, turn slowly, and let the metal edges guide your sightlines across the campus.
Notice how the weather and the city sky alter the sculpture's geometry. Those planes once anchored the west courtyard of the Alumni Memorial Union, and they still pull your sightlines toward the Haggerty Museum of Art nearby.