Harold Ancart

Harold Ancart: Pools

“I started working on the ‘pools’ during the summer of 2017. I had just moved to my new studio, which was bigger than the former one. Bigger meant that I could do more things, such as casting concrete forms, which I had done in the past. I knew I wanted to do something new but had no idea what that would be. As summer was making itself comfortable over the city, it got warmer and warmer in my studio.

My assistant and I were sweating a lot, complaining about the fact that almost nobody has a swimming pool in New York City. It is because of the real estate—the price per square foot, and the density of the population—that no one has one. But what if they were smaller? Anyone could afford the space for one, and even if one could not bathe in it, one could still invite their friends to have a drink or a cigarette around the pool. Who cares that you can’t swim in it; everyone knows that once you own a pool you never go in....We cast the first one on the same day.’’

—Harold Ancart