Me Man
1983

Standing at over eight-feet tall, Viola Frey’s Me Man is fashioned in clay on a scale almost unprecedented for the medium. To make such a large-scale work, Frey first built the clay figure and allowed it to dry. Once hardened, she sawed it apart to produce sections that would fit in the kiln. After each piece had been glazed and fired separately, Frey reassembled and painted the whole sculpture. Her process remains legible in the material itself, with horizontal seams especially visible across Me Man’s torso. As was common for Frey’s sculptures of men, this one wears a blue suit and gesticulates, as though in the middle of conversation. A representation of the American businessman, Me Man likewise recalls television characters from the 1950s, and evidences Frey’s interest in the satiric depiction of the totems of everyday life: in this case, middle-class respectability.