Although concerned with the classic qualities of formal Modernism such as texture, surface, weight, equilibrium and balance, at the core of the art of Michael Warren lies something far less tangible: an examination of the warp and weft of human existence itself. Many art-lovers, familiar with his public sculptures, Wood Quay, outside the civic offices of Dublin City Council, Beneath the 'bow, at the entrance to the Irish Museum of Modern Art (Fig 8) or Antaeus, in the Devil's Glen forest park in Wicklow (Fig 6), while appreciating the qualities of dignity and uprightness in his work, might hesitate when faced with such grand assertions. The notion that Warren's sculptures represent a search for meaning in life, when taken in the context of the artist's devotion to an increasingly pure abstraction, can seem overstated. However, in looking at the fifty or so major public sculptures Warren has created over the past quarter century, it is clear that three important threads unify his work. The first is akin to Modernism, the methodical pursuit of an ideal, expressed for the most part as non-figurative geometric form, carved in wood or stone and occasionally cast in bronze. The second thread weaves in history, philosophy, religion and the artist's own family background (he hails from Gorey, Co Wexford). But the third relates to a spiritual dimension, where gravity, and upward movement, are seen as redemptive of the human condition of incompleteness.

Warren's matter-of-fact approach to sculpture echoes his philosophy of art: that it is the matter of sculpture that is important, the manner in which a sculpture occupies space, with its mass, and gravity, holding it in position. While his sculptures are triumphs of formalist art, they also contain complex and subtle references to Irish history, architecture, places and people. Notwithstanding that Warren works with a restricted palette, each minimal change in curve, line and shape is deliberate, and connects the work to this wider context. A case in point is Gateway, his controversial corten steel sculpture erected in Dun Laoghaire in 2003 (Fig 9), where the rounded 'shoulders' are exercises in pure geometry, but also echo the elliptical curves of the 18th-century Georgian entrance gates to Merchant's Quay or the entrance gateway to Dublin Castle. Their shape is not accidental: if extended into space, these convex curves would form an arch. Nor are the concave curves underneath accidental, evoking as they do the geometry of Celtic crosses, emblematic of an earlier period in Irish history. A descendant of the Normans who settled in Wexford in the 12th century, Warren consciously places himself at the fulcrum of these cultures, contrasting in his work a monastic, almost pantheistic, reverence for wood and nature, with the blunt determination of welded steel. In terms of his studio practice, Warren has also moved in a new, more expressive direction, with the recent completion of Go Deo, a tall sculpture cast in bronze (Figs 4 & 5), a homage to Samuel Beckett. (13 April 2006 will be the centenary of the birth of Samuel Beckett.) He sees this new work as more personal: 'I put it down to a variant in approach, allowing chance to play a much bigger role, and not to be quite so worried, to relax and make things.' Reading Warren's sculptures as abstract and separate from the world of memory and imagination becomes even more difficult when works such as Go Deo are considered. A bronze sculpture, in the form of a cross surmounted by a writhing plant-like form, Go Deo – meaning, in Irish, 'forever' – is inspired by 'Godot', the main, but invisible, protagonist in Beckett's play Waiting for Godot. Beckett's precise stage directions call for a single tree on an otherwise empty stage, where Estragon and Vladimir hope to make their rendezvous with the mysterious Godot. Warren's sculpture evokes the spirit of the play: a meditation on meaning and existence.

Born 21 September 1950, Michael George Warren was the first of George Warren and Ella Jackson's three children. The Warren family, originally Anglo-Normans, have been settled in Co Wexford for many centuries. Warren's father was descended from the Switzer family, Palatines, or Lutherans who were encouraged to settle in Ireland in the early 18th century. Between 1964 and 1969 Michael Warren attended St Columba's College, a private boarding school near Dublin. There he found three members of staff inspirational, the art teacher Frank Morris, a sculptor who specialised in 'direct' wood carving, and English teachers Timothy Brownlow and David FitzGerald. FitzGerald introduced Warren to the writings of Simone Weil, the French philosopher who died in 1943. Weil's Gravity and Grace, first published in English in 1952, provided a vocabulary and a springboard for Warren's attempt to integrate philosophical and spiritual beliefs into the making of highly formalised, non-figurative sculptures. Originally from Arklow, Frank Morris the art teacher at St Columba's, had worked in London before studying architecture at Bolton Street, Dublin. He gave up architecture in favour of sculpture, and although his work was highly regarded, he worked for the most part in comparative obscurity. Married to the painter Camille Souter, Morris lived with her in a cottage in Calary Bog, in the Wicklow Mountains.

Art might not have been high on the curriculum at St Columba's, but Frank Morris' predecessor, Oisín Kelly, was one of the outstanding sculptors in Ireland during the post-war period. His Children of Lir, a large bronze sculpture, was erected in the Garden of Remembrance in Dublin in 1968. Around this time, Warren was carving his own first tentative essay in the field of sculpture. A simple 'direct' carving Torso, represents a female body, from the knees to the chest (Fig 15). In 1969-70 Warren completed a foundation course at Bath Academy of Art, England. 'We had a lot of very good avant-garde teachers, who introduced us to the work of John Cage and Marcel Duchamp. There was a great opening up of ideas, an interest in narrative or figurative painting, in artists such as Joe Tilson, Richard Hamilton and R B Kitaj, who was showing at the Marlborough Gallery.' In common with other British art colleges, Bath Academy had replaced, or supplemented, its conventional art history course with 'complementary studies', which encompassed literature, sociology and other disciplines. During his return visits to Ireland, Warren kept in touch with his former teachers. Eventually, when Frank Morris offered him a sculpture apprenticeship, Warren quit art college in Bath and moved back to Wicklow, where Morris and Camille Souter lived.

In the summer of 1971, Warren's apprenticeship to Morris, where he learned the techniques of 'direct' carving, was cut short by the untimely death of his teacher, at the age of forty-two. Although Morris' output as a sculptor was small, his work was appreciated by a small circle of admirers. Years later, Warren remembered Morris' method of teaching, the ways he would compare woodcarving to peeling an onion, the sculptor removing layers of wood in order to uncover an 'essential form' at the heart of the timber. Warren was asked if he would be willing to return to his old school, as art teacher. He accepted, and also enrolled as a student at Trinity College Dublin, reading Philosophy, Psychology and English Literature. However, his sojourn in Dublin was to last just a year and in 1971 he returned to the study of art, at the Accademia di Belle Arte di Brera in Milan, where Luciano Minguzzi was professor of sculpture, and the history of art professor was Guido Ballo, whose textbook Occhio Critico, 'The Critical Eye' is a key critical text of the period. During the four years Warren spent studying in Milan, he frequently visited the Castello Sforzesco to see the Rondanini Pietà, the late unfinished sculpture by Michelangelo. Graduating in 1975, Warren's final year thesis was on the sculpture of Eduardo Chillida, the Basque artist whom he went to visit in Spain. 'Chillida did a series of big timber baulk sculptures, titled in Basque Abesti Gogorra, or ''Violent Song''. They were an enormous turning point for me.' For Warren, the essence of Chillida's work is that he re-introduced the sense of mass and weight into sculpture.

After graduating from the Brera, Warren returned to Ireland in 1976. Dating from that year, Hermetic Construction, is composed of four interlocking elements of Spanish chestnut, held together under the weight of gravity. In similar fashion, Dislocation, also carved from solid planks, is hinged around a centre fulcrum and locks together. Commissioned for the campus of University College Galway, Logos I, Homage to Emile Novis is made of oak and steel. The title derives from St John's gospel: 'In the beginning was the word'. In Greek 'word' is 'logos', meaning a correct ratio or proportion. The sculpture is a homage to Warren's hero Weil (who once used the pseuedonom Emile Novis). For Weil, 'logos' implied geometric, or proportional equality, in preference to simple or arithmetic equality.

A chance meeting the following year with architect Ronald Tallon, a partner in the firm Scott Tallon Walker, was the beginning of an enduring friendship. It also led to a series of sculpture commissions for buildings designed by Scott Tallon Walker, notably Millennium Sculpture (1999), at the headquarters of RTÉ, Wood Quay at the Dublin Civic Offices, Column Figure (1984-5), for the IDA and Pasqua (1999), in the atrium of A & L Goodbody's offices at the Cravat Centre, Dublin. From the outset, Tallon was particularly impressed by a key work, the bronze sculpture De-creation III (1977), which brought together for the first time what Warren had learned from his earlier teachers combined with what he learned at the art academy in Milan. The title refers to several works from that period. The original version of De-creation V, an oak sculpture dating from 1978-79, was first sited at the Farnsworth House, Illinois, an icon of Modernist architecture, designed by Mies van der Rohe in 1950. Set on an area of paving in grass, with woodlands behind, De-creation V, is composed of three short baulks of interlocking oak. Massive cracks along the grain of the geometric baulks contrast with deep straight notches scored across the grain.

Although when completed, Warren's sculptures have the quality of having been, literally, made for the site, not all of his commissions have been straightforward in execution. In 1980 his austere oak construction, Noche Oscura, was the cause of controversy, and its installation adjacent to the Dublin Port & Docks head office was delayed for a year. In Noche Oscura, seen from above, the interlocking pieces, enclose a square. The work can be likened to a frozen dance, a dance of timber beams, shadows and spaces. In 1980, also, Warren held his first solo exhibition, at his own home and studio in Gorey. The newly completed studio, designed by Ronald Tallon, is a steel frame building, placed on a north-south axis, ideal for the making and displaying of sculpture.

In 1988, while participating in the Olympiad of Art in Seoul, Warren met the French writer and art critic Gerard Xuriguera, a meeting which proved to be the beginning of another enduring friendship. Xuriguera introduced Warren to organisations and countries around the world, and encouraged his participation in international sculpture symposia, resulting in a number of works being created in Japan, Andorra, Spain, France, the French West Indies and Ecuador. The sculptures in these countries differ from most of his Irish work in that they tend to be placed in landscapes rather than architectural or urban environments. Among the works made in this international context are Chi (1990), an abbreviated circle of steel, overlooking the town of Oloron Sainte-Marie in France; Journey Inland, a sculpture of vertical mahogany elements (Fig 10) sited in 1990 in the Campo de las Naciones in Madrid; and A Full Moon in March, which was made in Minamikita, Japan, in 1992. The previous year, A Pagan Place (Un Lloc Pagá), was sited in the mountains of Andorra (Fig 16). Made of carbonised oak, corten steel, white cement, water and tar, the tallest element of A Pagan Place stands over seven metres high. In Guadaloupe the artist constructed Alizes et Tortues (Fig 11), while two years later his Hors les Murs, was sited at Clermont-Ferrand in France. In 1996 the Portugese sculptor Alberto Carneiro invited Warren to work in Portugal, resulting in the sculpture Trade Winds. Warren relished working on these commissions, learning different languages and working, as was the case in 1998 in Ecuador, with local crews of up to sixty workers, creating sculptures on a giant scale. For El Arado y las Estrellas (The Plough and the Stars), Warren was awarded a Decoration of Cultural Merit by the government of Ecuador (Fig 12).

Warren's 'stele' sculptures were exhibited for the first time in 1995, at his second exhibition at the Douglas Hyde Gallery. Single vertical planks of chestnut, oak or beech wood, bearing very few marks, these steles lean against the wall, curving gently at the base. The artist describes these works, perhaps the most minimal he has ever created, as being about the relationship of key dimensions, height, breadth, depth and degree of curvature. 'Judgement here is highly subjective, you can't get a ruler out and do it. A large part of what it's about is not enclosing or trapping space. With the steles there is an attempt to develop a sense of presence, working with opposites and contradictions. The stele is taken from a baulk of wood, but when it is finished, about two thirds of the timber has been removed.' John Hutchinson wrote about these works: 'Balance is crucial in this regard – poised equilibrium between an object made and unmade, between lightness and weight, movement and stillness, height and breath... These works are reminiscent of the Chinese saying about the strength of a bamboo, which will survive the storm that will destroy a less pliable tree'. During the 1980s, Warren produced a number of key works, many of them in Wexford, Waterford and the counties nearby. His painted steel Void Anchored (1980-85) was acquired for Kilkenny Castle, while at Leighlinbridge, Co Carlow, the four-metre high first version of Thrones, provided an impressive roadside sculpture. In the artist's native Co Wexford, the oak and corten steel De-creation VI (1987), over seven metres high, is sited beside the estuary at Ferrybank. The vertical oak beam drops from the sky absolutely straight, then kinks slightly, but is prevented from striking the ground by another beam, intersecting it at low angle. Adjoining, and almost touching, is a short vertical element, set at a slight angle. This supports the taller element. The sculpture In Praise of Limits (1987-88), has been permanently sited at the artist's home in Co Wexford. The works consists of two squared baulks of oak, the taller vertical element containing an angled joint reinforced by two bolted steel plates set into the wood. Beside this vertical element is a short horizontal baulk, the angle in the centre marked by rows of steel bolts.

One of the most ambitious projects that Michael Warren has worked upon in terms of public sculpture was the memorial, erected between 1997 and 1999 at Oulart Hill in Co Wexford, commemorating the 1798 Rising (Fig 1). A collaborative project made in conjunction with the architect, Ronald Tallon, Tulach a' tSolais is an extraordinary work, deriving its structure from a simple room or elementary house, but bringing to the expression of this simple concept a remarkable attention to purity of space and detail. The sculpture takes the form of a semi-subterranean chamber, containing simple benches made of Irish oak. The benches, with their double concave scoops, are like horizontal steles. The wood is taken from trees from Co Meath which were planted in 1798.

Recent works include East Point, a tall, tilted steel sculpture erected at the East Point Business Park in 2001 (Fig 3) while in 2004, Warren completed an eleven-tonne marble sculpture Amor Fati, sited at Taoyuan in Taiwan (Fig 14). Before the sculpture was placed on its plinth, Buddhist monks were consulted to pronounce on the placing. The monks recommended no changes be made. The eleven-tonne block of 'White Jade' marble, brought from North Vietnam to Taiwan, was lowered by crane into position. However, at the last minute there was doubt as to the ability of the plinth to withstand the shock of impact. With the sculpture suspended in mid-air, Warren built a series of sugar pyramids. When the crane driver let the sculpture down, the sugar absorbed the shock. Afterwards, the sugar crystals were dissolved with hot water, letting the sculpture down the final centimeter, 'as sweetly as you like'.

In the Mall in Waterford, the sculpture No Pasaran, commemorates eleven Waterford men who fought with the International Brigade during the Spanish Civil War, while, in 2005, Reloj Solar, a form of sundial, was sited in the courtyard of a private house in Killiney County Dublin (Fig 13).

Over the past thirty years, the sculpture of Michael Warren has been characterised by a limited and concise vocabulary of structured form. Evident first and foremost is a respect for the materials he works with, revealed through the emphasising of wood grain, with rust marks from bolts forming an integral part of works, drill marks exposed on marble surfaces and milled steel polished until it shines brightly. The joints, whether secured with wooden pegs, dovetails, or steel plates and bolts, are considered. Whatever their scale or finish, there is generally a dominant horizontal or vertical axis. Geometry is important, as is size, proportion, weight and density. His works are often architectural, ranging from the intimate bench-like feeling of Horizontal Plane with Void (Fig 7), to the austere vertical elements of A Pagan Place (Fig 16). A prolonged and attentive reading of the works reveals a more subtle vocabulary: the way in which wood weathers and cracks, involves the passage of time and seasons. Most of Warren's sculptures have a static dignified quality, yet contain also a sense of rotation, gradually revealed as the sculptures are seen from different viewpoints. Their siting, in gardens, fields, city squares or mountainsides, is carried through with meticulous attention to detail and sense of place. What happens at the base of the sculpture is important. Sometimes the vertical elements seem to strike off the earth, dropping down, then shooting off at an angle, like a thunderbolt. Other vertical elements are quite straight, or have a slight change in angle as they approach the ground, as in a knee bending slightly. Sometimes they seem to lean, one towards the other, as if seeking support, a crutch. The relationship, or dialogue, between separate elements directs our reading of the overall structure and serves to humanise the work.

Unveiling Michael Warren's sculpture Anteus (Fig 6) at the Devil's Glen in Wicklow in 2001, Seamus Heaney reflected on the meaning of the work: 'While you may not be sure what it stands for, you cannot miss the fact that it stands its ground. It makes a thing of itself and in so doing it helps to consolidate something in ourselves…the longer this artwork of Michael Warren's stands here, the stronger it will appear as a shrine to energy and endurance...it gives us a wonderful, mysterious sense of crossing a threshold and going through a gateway, getting deeper into where we are and what we are.' Reflecting on Heaney's words, Warren adds his own codicil 'and that we are', emphasising the importance of Wittgenstein's idea that while the how and why of existence may belong to philosophy, it's the that of existence that constitutes the real miracle.

Peter Murray is the Curator of the Crawford Municipal Gallery of Art Cork.
1 John Hutchinson Simple Measure exhibition catalogue, Douglas Hyde Gallery 1995, p.15