Corban Walker in Venice Is The Daily Pic By Blake Gopnik

This is a photo of Corban Walker, an Irish-born Brooklyner who often makes work about being four feet tall, and whom I profiled in this week’s Newsweek. I actually think this portrait is important, because it brings the whole issue of scale into focus. Working with the maquette for his installation in the Irish pavilion at the last Venice Biennale, Walker briefly seems a giant, while a room-high sculpture appears diminutive – the opposite, of course, of how thing’s “really are”. It’s trite to note that “big” and “small” are relative terms, but I think we often forget that fact when we’re dealing with people who don’t measure up to our expectations.

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