By Sienna Freeman
Upon crossing through the black wrought-iron gates of San Francisco's Transamerica Redwood Park, one encounters an unexpected urban sensorial cocktail: the freshness of lush evergreen, slightly sweet, damp earth, and effervescent wood aromas mixed with the sounds and smells of the city. Park visitors appear in various forms of recreation, lounging solo on tree-shaded benches, socializing in group seating areas, or enjoying table games in the sun. Voices carry and bounce off the walls of surrounding buildings at the foot of the landmark Transamerica Pyramid, whose sharp, pointed silhouette towers above.
The scene is richly cinematic–a multitude of stories unfolding in a shared free-to-the-public space–where relational dynamics between strangers and those more familiar bump up against each other and unfurl. From July 17 through December 14, 2025, this social and architectural landscape is also visited by twelve bronze casts of three-dimensional works by the historic Surrealist artist Max Ernst. Created between 1938 and 1939, the original sculptures lived at the home of Ernst and his then-romantic partner and fellow artist, Leonora Carrington. Ranging in scale from traditional bust-sized pedestal pieces to large-scale objects that loom over visitors, the sculptures are placed curiously throughout the park, amongst the trees, peaking out from foliage, with select objects taking center stage in more prominent visitor throughways.
Just inside the park, visitors confront Ernst's "Sphinx et Sirène," the largest and most complex object in the exhibit. At about ten and a half feet tall by eight feet wide, a hybrid stag-sphynx creature perches over a vertical headless and armless mermaid form. Each is supported by stacked architectural slabs that anchor the object to the horizon, evoking compositions from protective statues of deities that would guard ancient Egyptian tombs. The sphynx wears a three-pronged crown on its head, its gaze downcast towards the mermaid with its front paw resting on the implied more feminine creature's rounded hip below. The mermaid bears two cone-shaped breasts and an exaggerated, protruding triangular mons pubis, each bulge mirroring the shape of the figure's lopped neck mound above. While the mermaid wears no face for an expression, its body gestures away from the stag, as if more inclined towards direct confrontation with viewers in front of her. The masculine figure seems to dominate and seek attention.
In the lost original sculpture, both figures in "Sphinx et Sirène" were noted to have worn a similar crown; however, the mermaid had already lost its head by the early 1990s, when the plaster molds for these bronzes were made. Just down the pathway, another mermaid figure is found, this one also limbless in an anthropomorphic sense. Ernst's "Sirène Ailée" measures just a few feet tall and about a foot and a half wide, displayed emerging from within the park's permanent fountain. Here, a demure snake-like form hovers in the pool beneath jetting streams of water, perched upon an architectural base. The figure appears wiry and segmented, like an earthworm, and sprouts a cocked head, two pointed cylindrical breasts, a belly button, and a thick fish-like forked tail. Where one might expect to find arms, two truncated wings emerge, their proportion seemingly too short to be of any use in taking flight. A crowd of visitors is invited to sit and ponder the scene, as tables and chairs encompass the area surrounding the water feature. The thin figure appears to be caught in mid-wriggle, attempting, struggling, but failing, to propel to some new depth or height.
Across the way from the fountain, adjacent to an area designed for visitors to play ping-pong, shuffleboard, and enjoy the park's cafe, stands Ernst's "Loplop Ailé." Here, a monolithic slab sits erect on top of a marble pedestal, measuring about seven and a half feet tall by three and a half feet wide, echoing the shape of a flathead screwdriver's tip. Loplop, Ernst's well-known alter ego or "private phantom" as the artist himself once put it, appears as a bird-like creature rendered in relief on the face of the slab. In this incarnation, Loplop is a humanoid with thick muscular legs, a flat chest and torso, and a beaked head peering upright. Like the mermaid in the fountain, the figure's arms appear as clumsy wings caught in mid-flap. Between the figures' legs protrudes a large fig leaf, perhaps referencing an art-historical convention that dates back to the biblical story of Adam and Eve using fig leaves to "protect their modesty." The figure appears to be climbing, or jumping, upward towards some new higher elevation, only to be caught frozen in mid-motion, attempting to soar but instead succumbing to the limitations of its rectangular container.
"It would make a wonderful movie," writes Susan Ruban Suleiman about Max Ernst's and Leonora Carrington's love story in the book Significant Others: Creativity and Intimate Partnership. Together, the couple found solace from rising pre-World War II political tensions in a small village in southern France, where they lived alongside the original objects cast in this exhibition. During this time, Ernst was arrested as an alien enemy and interned in two prisons, later returning home in late 1939, only to be arrested again in May 1940. Meanwhile, Carrington fled to Spain, intending to cross the Atlantic and, after a mental breakdown, returned to collect Ernst's personal belongings, leading to the hurried sale of their property and the abandonment of these original artworks. They found forceful momentum together at this home in their beginning—intellectual, romantic, creative, and collaborative forces propelled them, which were abruptly curtailed due to intense oppressive forces beyond their control.
There is a poignant metaphor here, apparent as one walks through Transamerica Redwood Park, hearing the wind rustle through the majestic tall trees, seeing Ernst's sculptures pop out like mystic watchers from behind human-made gardens, smelling the grounding, ancient scents of fresh water and dirt. An uncanny feeling becomes palpable, as Ernst's objects, something old, art "ancestors" for many, amongst the ever resilient qualities of nature, seem to return to remind us of a kind of history. A shifting global balance of power, rising authoritarianism, threats to democracy, and a desire to thrive beyond the human-made constraints that surround us reinforce a desire to live one's life freely and fully. One wonders whether the movie telling this story would be set in the past or the present.
