When creating her diverse works, Arlene Shechet (born 1951 in New York) embraces chance processes, especially those dictated by materials that change from one state to another (such as plaster). Shechet’s oeuvre ranges from series that draw on the forms and vocabulary of East Asian art to explorations of clay as a “three-dimensional drawing material.” For much of her career, Shechet has worked predominantly in clay, a medium historically overlooked in mainstream art discourses because of its associations with craft and domesticity

Essential Head was part of the ICA’s 2015 exhibition, Arlene Shechet: All At Once, and is an important early work by Shechet, emblematic of the artist’s sustained interest in East Asian art and the possibilities of chance. In 1983, Shechet visited the ninth-century Indonesian temple compound of Borobudor, one of the largest Buddhist monuments in the world. She describes it as “an experience of sculpture as a language for transmitting information, feelings, beliefs, and thoughts.” Ten years later, Shechet created a series of heads—including Essential Head—whose materials and visual vocabulary are similar to her Buddha-inspired sculptures she created during the same period. To make the heads, Shechet sets steel bars vertically into individually cast concrete blocks. As she grips the bar where it meets the base, she pours quick-drying plaster onto her clenched fist, grasping and forming with one hand while she continues to pour with the other. Through this process, Shechet plays with chance and emphasizes the physicality necessary to create the finished object.