In Upward Swoosh (2025), Douglas Rieger continues his ongoing investigation into the relationship between material, form, and gesture. The work centers on a hand-carved wooden element—a shape that has repeatedly surfaced in the artist’s practice—suggesting both intuitive familiarity and formal refinement. Its elegant upward curve recalls Brancusi’s Bird in Space, a reference that Rieger acknowledges as an unconscious yet enduring influence on his sculptural vocabulary.

The wooden form rises from a complex, layered base composed of an aluminum casting remnant, a stainless steel hoop, stacked rubber discs, and a roughly cut aluminum plate. Each component retains traces of its industrial origin: the hoop functions as a notional point of attachment or “earring,” inviting a playful anthropomorphic reading, while the rubber discs and torch-cut base echo mechanisms of vibration, pressure, and force on a miniature scale.

Through this assemblage, Rieger merges the sensuality of hand-carved wood with the raw immediacy of industrial materials. The sculpture embodies a balance between grace and mechanical weight, refinement and roughness—a dynamic “sculptural sandwich” that nods subtly to Brancusi’s methods of stacking and composition, while asserting a distinctly contemporary material language.