Willard Boepple: Sculpture
Salander-O’Reilly Galleries, 20 East 79th Street (212.879.6606).
“brush,
pencil, chisel, knife”
511 Gallery, 511 West 25 Street (212.255.2885).
Industrial Beauty
George
Billis Gallery, 511 West 25th Street (212.645.2621).
Synthesis: Experiments
in Collaboration
Axel Raben Gallery, 526 West 26 Street, (212.647.9064).
Joan Brown: Painted
Constructions
George Adams Gallery, 41 West 57 Street, 212.644.5665).
Versions of these
reviews originally appearedThe New York Sun on Thursday, July 22 and
Thursday, July 29, 2004
By MAUREEN
MULLARKEY
Willard
Boepple: Sculpture
Willard Boepple Temple, 2003
Willard Boepple is a sculptor whose vocabulary draws from the look and
language of architecture. Architecture is a social art, a reflective
instrument of the society for which it builds. Any sculpture that aggressively
refers to it, leaning on the prestige of the architect’s craft,
makes itself vulnerable to distinctions between the communal aims of
architecture and the more individualistic ones of fine art. It risks
the charge of mimicry, which is what remains once structural complexity,
weight-bearing concerns and purposes of shelter and assembly are removed.“Room”
(2000) is a nine foot high skeletal house-shape in patinated aluminum.
Light on its feet and open like a trellis, each of its four sides resembles
the leading of Frank Lloyd Wright’s characteristic stained glass
windows. Here are the same closely paired verticals on each side of
a broader rectangle, joined at intervals by short parallel bars. Where
quadrangles of colored glass might be, Mr. Boepple drops aluminum panels
perpendicular to their posts to serve as shelving.
Viewers are likely
to wonder where on the lawn this shining gazebo would show to best effect.
Seen straight, unfiltered through the lens of stylish discourse, it
is unmistakably an upmarket garden folly. Picture it covered with wisteria
vines, shelves stocked with dahlias and wild strawberries in Italian
pots. Yes, I know the thought is inadmissible “in the ateliers
of any pedantic fine art,” to use Wright’s phrase; and it
is hardly what Mr. Boepple intended. But what an artist intends and
what he achieves are not identical. It is a fallacy to confuse them.Mr.
Boepple’s three dense, painted poplar “temples”, each
from 2003, suggest compressed tabletop rearrangements of David Smith’s
rectangular forms for “Cubi IX” (1961). Anyone interested
in modern sculpture will be reminded also of the cubical variations
of Jacques Schnier and Hans Aeschenbacher from the same period.
Designated as temples,
Mr. Boepple’s block configurations assert kinship with the ancient
megaron, precursor to Doric structures. (The megaron informs Wright’s
Unity Church, which he referred to as a temple.) But Mr. Boepple’s
suppressed entrances do not lead to any interior sanctum; they go clear
through to the other side. Sacred space is displaced by a box puzzle,
a simplified maze that exposes its own blind alley. If you rest a drink
on top, no deities will be offended.
“brush,
pencil, chisel, knife”
511 Gallery (formerly
Miller/Geisler) celebrates its name change with a group show of 13 of
its artists. The exhibition is ambitious, aspiring to stretch common
understanding of what constitutes painting and sculpture. It promises
art that moves beyond crusty constraints to become more elastic in definition.
Lurking here is
the assumption that tradition is an antique, like the stiffened antimacassar
on the back of great-grandpa’s chair. It is an attitude aimed at
audiences who comprehend tradition as a reiteration of the past rather
than an inheritance to be interpreted by each generation for its own
purposes.
511 showcases the
fruits of that mistake. Post-industrial folk art is the reigning genre.
Unlike the pre-industrial kind, made by untrained individuals, the post
variant is a mass product forged in an art school vernacular. Outsider
art is now insider art, a reversal enabled by pundits, promoters and
academics for whom artwork exists as a mere incident en route to the
commentary.
Jennifer Odem dyes
a cheap crocheted table cloth red, soaks it in acrylic medium, then
flops it on the floor to set. Ed Fraga takes the votive path with “Cathedral”
( 2001), a crude plywood construction that cobbles a headless Christmas
ornament with a tiny landscape cut to the shape of a palladium window.
Epoxy is his crucial medium. Matt Ernst’s series of small “Guideboats”
(2002) gives a good imitation of the sort of thing children carry home
from camp. Mark Cooper’s “Endless Column” (2002) is a
roadside totem, cousin to ones that appear along the East River Drive
under the overpass to the Triborough Bridge.
Bryan Le Boeuf Trois Bateaux 2004
oil on linen, dimensions to follow
Courtesy
The most persuasive
works are by those artists who are not straining for a style. Bryan
Le Boeuf’s “Trois Bateaux” (2004), the centerpiece of
his recent solo show, gives evidence of maturing to certain artistic
convictions, something quite different from style. He combines sympathy
for the human figure with a quirky, mildly surreal compositional wit.
Watch to see where he takes it.
Sculptor Mark Mennin
is similarly satisfying, mindful of the traditions of his craft. His
single, small marble “Head” (2003) is a finely worked mask
of a fleshy, homely male elevated by materials to a solemnity the model
might lack in life. It projects from the wall at a slight angle, reminiscent
of medieval gargoyles or a portrait head from the sedilia in Westminster
Abbey.
Popular appreciation
of landscape hinges on the romance of a good view. By contrast, the
scenery of urban infrastructures—the natural setting of urban artists—is
more challenging.
Even middling painters
can produce attractive pictures of beautiful places. It takes more robust
sensibilities to seek order and grace in city sights readily ignored.
Easy pleasure is not available. Viewers are on their own to discover
the emotional keynote to scenes that have nothing picturesque about
them.
Industrial Beauty
“Industrial
Beauty” exhibits cityscape paintings and drawings by 24 artists.
So much intelligent work is here that there is not enough column space
to give it its due. Let me start with Stephen Hicks who impresses with
the beauty of his paint handling and the vigor of his perceptions. He
brings emotional depth to ordinary street corners and mobile homes.
Pitch-perfect color and careful drawing, disguised by the fluidity of
his paint, elevate these small paintings above the random realities
they depict.
Elizabeth O’Reilly
draws magic out of the 3rd Street Bridge and derelict buildings on the
Gowanus Canal. True as her paintings are to their locations in and around
Red Hook, they serve as microcosms of the effects of modernity on the
outer boroughs of every city. She shares with Mr. Hicks a lively brush
and an optimism toward her subjects. Nicholas Evans-Cato’s wide-angled
“Panorama” (2003) captures the atmospheric damp of rain-washed
streets. Shadowless gray light, cool tonalities, gleaming puddles and
sweep of space evoke Gustave Caillabotte’s Paris on a rainy day.
Nicholas Evans-Cato
Panorama 2004
oil on linen, 30 x 60 inches
Courtesy George Billis Gallery
Ron Milewicz’
“Court House Square” (2003) is a coloristic tour de force,
subordinating naturalism to the geometric structures of his motif and
a high-keyed palette. The Citicorp building in Long Island City looks
glorious in yellow. Geometry is also the hallmark of Rick Dula’s
imposing cement factory, mathematical clarity of form taking precedence
over subjective sensations.
Andrew Lenaghan
negotiates the complexity and visual clutter of urban scenes with an
ease of concentration that reminds me of Antonio Lopez-García’s
great views of Madrid. So much is depicted, you barely notice how much
is merely indicated or left out. Sudden touches of subtle color move
the eye around the canvas; smooth surfaces belie the actual density
of his paint.
Lois Dodd’s
characteristic insouciance lends a hint of whimsy to factories in Jersey
City. Richard Orient’s Long Island fish hatchery is touched with
the same melancholy that informs rural barns. Thomas Connelly reveals
the controlled order of a loading dock; his nightscape of a commercial
lot is a harmony of brooding tones.
Diana Horowitz’
courtesy toward the man-made landscape is a constant pleasure. So is
the work is Roland Kulla, Stephen Magsig, Constance La Palombara, Andrew
Haines, Stanley Goldstein and others here.
Apart from Ms. Dodd,
the show contains few names known outside New York painting circles.
If celebrity is your guide to quality, you might as well catch the next
Hampton jitney. But anyone with eyes will be glad to have seen this
show.
Synthesis: Experiments
in Collaboration
Collaboration in
the arts has a long tradition; and pooling skills to extend the range
of individual talent is a worthy activity. So I had hopes for this show.
I should have known
better. Unlike the anonymous cooperation of the old workshop system,
contemporary couplings exist to produce a two-headed prima donna. In
Axel Raben’s exhibition of nine artist pairs, art work takes a
rear seat to the synthetic dyads which are the true artifacts. Viewers
are thrown into the faithless arms of the press release for guidance.
David Humphrey &
Jennifer Coates have a game going: one suggests a subject; the other
draws it. Thus, a “composite authorial self” is created. Drawings
include a bare-bottomed Santa squatting to pass snowflakes; a cartoon
cat biting a bunny beside a plateful of maggots. In this way “habits
are disabled, inhibitions are dissolved … and skill-shortcomings
encouraged.” Precisely.
Laura Lisbon &
Suzanne Silver investigate “the mutual interference of layered
mark-making.” They take turns scribbling on legal paper and post-it
notes with colored pencil, likening their process to the Talmud (compiled
over centuries by multiple commentators). To support their self-assessment,
they exhibit their email correspondence, a text inclining to the grand.
Creighton Michaels,
an otherwise attractive abstract painter, foregoes painting here for
a conceptual gig. He inserts twig-like dowels individually into the
wall, creating visual patterns similar to those in a kid’s book
of mazes. Mr. Michaels’ installation is lit, sort of, by James
Clark’s fluorescent bulbs in plastic bags. Bulbs are spotted with
thumb prints, like a perp sheet. Team effort is deemed “an environment
… a land of a thousand dances.”
Craig & Sean
Miller provide handmade miniature shipping crates topped by a doll house
gallery exhibiting a nano-sample of another artist’s work. These
may be interpreted as “sculptures, performance pieces or a group
portrait of contemporary art practice.” Unless a crate is just
a crate.
The unspoken aim
of all this conspicuous mutuality is to demonstrate that the artists
make the grade as intellectuals. Art making is largely a platform for
self-centered egos; the work of hands is a minor interest.
Joan Brown: Painted
Constructions
installation view
of Joan Brown's exhibition at Goerge Adams
Joan Brown ‘s work was a fey offspring of Bay Area figuration and
funk art. Making and breaking rules to suit herself, she could be exasperating
but she never bored.
On view at George
Adams are works from the early 70’s: cardboard sculptures (begun
in her kitchen from household materials while her studio was under renovation);
a metal cutout; and large-scale paintings and drawings.
The more distant
the post-60’s counter culture becomes, the more the paintings recede
into the era and movements that generated them. But the constructions,
rarely exhibited in her lifetime (1938-90), convey in full Ms. Brown’s
distinctive inventiveness and humor. The fun of their making is still
there to be seen.
Assembled here for
the first time as a body of work, the constructions articulate a nimble
faux-naif sophistication that survives the tropes of their times. Cutout
couples dance around the deck of “Luxury Liner” (1973), a
Noah’s Ark for party animals. The smokestack belches a musical
score. “Divers” (1974) hangs from the ceiling so we can see
the swimmers from above and below the water line. “Dancers on a
Car” (1973 is just that: a couple waltzing across the hood of a
1940’s-style sedan, a Florine-Stettheimer-like fantasia in 3-D.
