ON VIEW

Hammering Man depicts the silhouette of an anonymous worker with their head bent and a motorized arm hammering away at their work. According to Borofsky, "The Hammering Man represents the worker in all of us. We all use our hands to build our world together.  In describing the motion of the hammer rising to the head and back down to the hand, I sometimes say that half-way between the mind and the hand is the heart. In all of my work, I seek to convey the feeling that we are all connected. As all of the Hammering Man sculptures around the world symbolically work together, all hammering together at the same time, we are reminded of this feeling of universal connectedness." Although some have viewed the monotonous gesture of hammering as representative of the tedious tasks of assembly-line workers, the repetitive movement could also be understood as a prototype of the artist whose work is never-ending. The artist himself has stressed that the figure has a deeply positive personal, political, and social meaning.