“Molanphy’s performance consisted of him entering Gallery 371 and immediately throwing his body into the task of transmuting an empty, open-topped square box of white-slipped red clay (5’x5’x3′) into an empty tube (of similar scale), what Molanphy refers to as The Squircle. The offputting nature of the performance was due to a reek like faeces caused by the fermenting slip covering. Squircles, squares with rounded corners, are rarely considered offensive in an olfactory sense but Molanphy’s Squircle was meant to defy conventional understandings. It appeared as a clay square surrounding a circular void that would be transmuted into a clay circle surrounding a square void. The performance was to be seen as a play in action, trying out and testing new relationships and seeing relationships that come about by chance. . . . Molanphy’s sisyphean solution to the circle-square dilemma was an effortful passion that suggested obsession of the highest order: so exclusive that it created a closed abstract system. But while manifesting a system based on a squircle’s impossible hybrid geometry, the clay maker’s obsession became a celebration of the absurd. While working the clay, Molanphy appeared to be thinking of a story to rival those that had excited him to the task. He spoke to the mysterious fears of his audience’s collective nature and awakened in us a thrilling horror – one to make us dread to look round, to curdle our blood and quicken the beatings of our hearts. This performed absurdity became almost luscious, truly grotesque and yet retained its brilliance as something thoughtfully inventive by seizing on the capabilities of its subject (transmutation) and powerfully moulding and fashioning ideas suggested to it.” –from Chris Fry, “Brian Molanphy: Clay Man on Fire”, Ceramics: Art & Perception #81
2009, Gallery 371, ACAD, Calgary, AB, Canada