Maybe it’s Google’s translation engine, but when I read that Issac Cordal alternatively describes his tiny public installations as “interventions, I was unable to get the idea out of my head.  I first came across Cordal’s work when I read about his most famous piece (pictured bel0w), “Follow the Leader,” part of his “Waiting for Climate Change” series which reflected on politicians and the environment. When I came across his more recent work placing tiny mostly-solitary figures around cities, I was once again reminded of his genius.

His diminutive figures seem to be reacting to and interacting with the urban terrain in which he puts them, with cracks in sidewalk, with weeds, with puddles, with heights. The moving combination of his figures’ expressive poses and their extremely small scale make them seem so vulnerable, so hopeless, that I actually find myself feeling sympathy for them.

Here’s the translation of his artistic statement:

“Men and women are suspended and isolated in a motion or pose that can take on multiple meanings. The sympathetic figures are easy to relate to and to laugh with. They present fragments in which the nature, still present, maintains encouraging symptoms of survival. The precariousness of these anonymous statuettes, at the height of the sole of the passers, represents the nomadic remainders of an imperfect construction of our society. These small sculptures contemplate the demolition and reconstruction of everything around us. They catch the attention of the absurdity of our existence.”

Funny? They’re meant to be funny? Honestly, I feel like the more I read about art, the less I understand it. Nonetheless, his wonderful work will certainly stay with me, whether or not I am in on the joke.