Untitled

Untitled, 1980

Amir Nour

4^th District Police Station

2255 East 103^rd Street

            Commissioned for the 4^th District Police Station under Chicago’s Percent-for-art program, this untitled work is a linear arrangement of five semi-spherical forms. The pieces were fashioned from cold-rolled steel and painted matte black and the configuration of the components implies interdependence, in that they could be put together to form two complete spheres measuring six-feet in diameter. Imposing but still human in scale, the work juxtaposes simple geometric shapes in a manner that suggests a variety of potential meanings.

            Amir Nour was born in Sudan in 1939 and he studied art in Khartoum and London before coming to the United States in the 1960s. He earned an M.F.A from Yale University in 1969 and began teaching in Chicago in 1970. Although his work overlaps with some of the formal interests of Minimalism, such as the repetition of particular shapes in a series, his geometric forms move easily between different spheres of reference. As a site-specific abstract sculpture, the piece exists within a specific situation, perhaps asking the viewer to consider the relationship between the police and the surrounding neighborhood.