Forum 91

Water has been a recurring presence in the work of Charles Harlan (b. 1984, Smyrna, GA), whose sculptures surface and reflect various material and human histories. His readymade objects of choice, which are brought together with minimal alteration, are drawn from industrial, agricultural, and domestic aspects of the built environment. In their original contexts, they have use value as components of machinery, labor, trade, and craftsmanship. Through Harlan’s assembly and presentation as art, they summon symbolic connotations from which surprising conversations about meaning-making can emerge. They also challenge fundamental assumptions about what sculpture can and should be.

With Chimney (2025), a new commission by the museum, Harlan brings the ubiquitous and millennia-old practice of bricklaying into the gallery space. Familiar and simple in its form yet estranged and surreal in its context, his sculpture is modeled from a free-standing chimney that he encountered in an open field. The resulting work stands as a fragment of a home that no longer exists. At once inside and outside, it is rinsed continuously as if under perpetual rain. “Creating the work,” Harlan proposes, “opens a portal to that place and the experience of seeing it there.”

The exhibition is organized by Eric Crosby, Henry J. Heinz II Director, Carnegie Museum of Art, and Vice President, Carnegie Museums of Pittsburgh.