Paul Etienne Lincoln: The Glover’s Repository

The Glover’s Repository, 2008-2015, a major new sculpture by Lincoln, consists of a large glazed vitrine housing an elaborate clock mechanism and 24 slowly rotating gloves. Each glove represents a hostorical figure who has either committed a great deception or has been the unwitting victim of subterfuge.

From May Toft who fooled the entire British medical profession in the eighteenth century by giving birth to a rabbit to King Zog who survived fifty-five assasination attempts, the characters represented are all legends in their own right, albeit some self-proclaimed. Also included are Gabriele D’Annunzio, Primo Carnera and Contessa di Castiglione. Each character included, a group spanning 300 years, is explicated in meticulously researched biographical notes concealed in the four archival drawers in the bottom section of the vitrine.

Centrally placed in this cabinet of gloves, gauntlets and fluffers is an elaborate clock designed to control each glove through a series of complex gearboxes, each glove rotated one full circle for each year of the life lived by the character represented. The group resembles an elaborate orrery: where every part is a constituent of a whole, the subtle changes in speed and motion create an unpredictable beauty. However, its true beauty lies in its unrepeatability: no one combination of the gloves’ movements will ever represent itself twice in any viewer’s mind.