Mexican artist Bosco Sodi creates paintings and sculptures using materials from the earth. He has been deeply influenced by the Japanese interest in the beauty of imperfection, seeing aesthetic value in the disarray of everyday life. Throughout his work the artist juxtaposes the natural against the cultural, resisting our need to impose order on nature.

Over the past several years, Sodi has been making stacks of cubes made from the earth. These elemental building blocks, which have built cities around the globe throughout human history, take on new meaning at this scale. Out of the clay the artist coaxes a shifting palette of earth tones, which shift on each side of the cubes. These works suggest the ancient ambitions of civilization, and how our modern world dwarfs those worlds.

By placing Sodi’s cubes on Milwaukee’s main street, the juxtaposition of nature versus culture, modern versus ancient becomes apparent, and asks questions about the shifting urban landscapes that we create today.