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There is something pleasantly subversive about encountering Ann Weber’s recycled-cardboard sculpture in the twin corporate lobbies on either side of the glass skyscraper office building at 425 Market Street, near the Embarcadero in downtown San Francisco. (One lobby faces a courtyard off Market; the other faces Fremont
Street.) Weber’s elegant abstractions seem to have made themselves at home, visually commandeering the spaces through a combination of scale (some are really quite large) and a quiet assertiveness. The 20 or so pieces, strategically distributed through both lobby spaces, were predominantly white — resonating handsomely with the black-veined white marble floors. A few, made from the more familiar brown corrugated cardboard, harmonized with the wood-paneled walls. In each space, Weber hung three basket-like, brown cylindrical shapes over the reception desk, high on the wall (hiding in plain sight, as it were); the other pieces were free-standing, alone or in small groups.
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side of the building, there is an unmistakable relationship between the bulging, topiary-like curves of two immense brown sculptures (Almost 16 and 15 ½, both 2006) and the decorous trees lining the curb outside, visible through nearby floor-to-ceiling windows. The lobby’s deliberately liminal, transitional qualities are foregrounded by both the size of Weber’s pieces—which almost graze the high ceilings, like overgrown life forms—and this visual connection to the world outside.
Ann Webber uses humble material to create mass. From another time Ruth Asawa worked with wire to create arial space. Both represent works having the intensity of touch.