George Sugarman:
Painted Aluminum Sculpture, 1977-1996
Joan T. Washburn
20 West 57 Street, New York, N.Y., 10019
212-397-6780
January 8-February 28, 2004
By ERIC
GELBER
installation shot
at Washburn, shows various works, including, from left, Untitled
1982, acrylic on aluminum, 22 x 20 x 12 inches, and Orange Around,
1978, same medium, 60 x 50 x 48 inches; Wings 1988, 45 x 33 x
27 inches, and White Floor Piece;.
"Who would have thought
that a schmuck like me would have become an international artist?"
Did Sugarman's modesty or the fact that he didn't have a fetish for
hands-off manufacturing techniques and power tools and equipment, lead
to his being all but ignored by the art establishment after his death?
Perhaps it was the fact that his work didn't fit in with any historical
isms. His wood sculptures of the 60s were painted in bold and distinct
colors (something which set him apart from the Minimalists who ruled
the roost at the time). He continued to invent forms that were imaginative
and suggestive and not self consciously dehumanized and avant-garde,
up until his death in August 1999. Clearly Sugarman wanted to go beyond
the vestigial monumentalism found in the works of Modernist masters
such as Brancusi, but he did not reject all that had come before. He
made isolated art objects and interactive public works, some of which
stirred up as much controversy as Serra's Tilted Arc.
This exhibit includes colored
aluminum sculptures from 1977-1990 (I am not sure why the show is titled
Painted Aluminum Sculpture, 1977-1996). The room the works are in is
tiny but the inadequate setting cannot suppress the energy, complexity,
imaginative force, and beauty of the work.
In the 60s Sugarman made
small and large, asymmetrical wood sculptures. They are intuitive forms,
a fanciful blend of the organic and geometric. By painting them he covered
the seams where separate parts were joined. This seamlessness strengthened
the relationships between the individually colored sections. Sugarman
explored horizontality and forced the viewer to relook at the sculpture
while changing positions in the surrounding space. His sculptures spread
and do not rise. They are celebrations of formal invention.
Sugarman believed in the
symbolic power of abstract forms. These sculptures strike a perfect
balance between the gestural and the figural. They suggest elemental
forces, the body in motion. Their dynamism is crucial to their meaning.
Sugarman uses enamel and acrylic paint to color the rounded and pointy
aluminum shapes. Some of the aluminum sculptures were fabricated from
paper maquettes. Sugarman made all of the sculptures in this show by
cutting shapes out of aluminum sheets and welding or riveting them together
to form an undulating whole.
You don't know how to read
Orange Around (1978) or Waltz (1985). Their paper thin, incised and
bent segments, reminiscent of Matisse's late decoupages, flatten out
when viewed from a distance, but the twists and turns the shapes make
and the way they overlap force us to register the sculpture as a three
dimensional form when examined close-up. It is impossible not to circle
around each of these pieces. Sugarman makes us curious to see where
the meandering and intertwined shapes end up.
Sugarman is one of the few
contemporary sculptors who used color successfully. Instead of simply
covering the surface and detracting from the movement of forms, his
colors vacillate between describing an interior and an exterior. Whether
the sculpture is a convolution like Orange Around or a riff on one shape
such as Five Points Small Versions (1982), the colorization (enamel
or acrylic) is just as dynamic as the forms. The color is not inert,
an afterthought. Orange Around is the most complex piece in the exhibit.
A swirling funnel shape made of riveted aluminum cut-outs whips into
space and falls in on itself. The mad jumble of leaf like shapes refuses
to sit still. The incisions in the aluminum sheets allow light and the
surrounding spaces to pass through the sculptures, and this increases
the watery flow of the parts. For Sugarman, the spaces surrounding the
art were just as full of meaning as the forms themselves. There are
empty spaces where the shapes have been cut out of the aluminum. These
empty spaces are framed and integrated into the whole. The viewer can
see different parts of the sculpture through the cutouts. This makes
the spatial relationships between the different parts of the sculpture
more difficult to comprehend. The interplay between solid and void in
a number of these sculptures is rhythmic and graceful.
Sugarman brilliantly uses
overlap in the monochromatic Untitled (1977-1980) and Wings (1988) which
hangs from the wall. If anything in this exhibit can be called abstract
expressionist it is these two works. Separate parts of these sculptures
converge and diverge in a mesmerizing way, conjuring forth images of
the brushwork found in the best deKoonings.
Even a sculpture with distinct
parts, Untitled (1982) is complex. Made up of an orange funnel shape
with an asymmetrical wall of blue leaf shapes behind it, the complimentary
colors blend before our eyes because of the many triangular and diamond
shaped openings that form between the individual pieces of aluminum
that are riveted together. Sugarman incorporates empty space into his
work better than any sculptor I can think of.
This small exhibit is better
than nothing, but it is sad that no monographs have been written about
Sugarman. Except for the essays in the catalogs of two major shows,
one at Hunter College in 1998 and a retrospective in 1982 at the Joslyn
Art Museum of Omaha, and various other small-scale shows, we have nothing.
Sugarman deserves more.
Read Benjamin
La Rocco on this exhibition
