His wall-mounted, mask-like “We Go To Their Faltering” (2014) is an amalgam of colored bands (white, green, orange, purple and ecru) that are fashioned into a puckered surface, which is thrust forward from an arching, mostly black shape behind it, and adorned with fanged protrusions along the bottom edge. The texture of the surface disruptions lends the image - a network of swelling biomorphic shapes that looks like a space alien standing at attention - a three-dimensional presence, as the scattered light glancing off its glossy surface adds a layer of evanescence to the painting’s willfully awkward forms and brackish color.ĭavid Finn, “Weight” (2013), acrylic and charcoal on Tyvek, 40 x 30 inchesĭaniel Wiener’s multi-colored works in Apoxie-Sculpt combine elements of sculpture, painting and process art. The work is a painting, a drawing (the contours of the blade trace a filament-thin line around its shape) and a bas-relief, several identities residing in one.ĭavid Finn’s powerful “Weight” from 2013, a work in charcoal and shoe-polish-brown acrylic on a sheet of Tyvek (the ubiquitous polyethylene water barrier wrapped around new construction) that has been afflicted with innumerable folds and wrinkles. Ellen Siebers’ untitled Minimalist abstraction from 2015 is an 18 x 18-inch gray square on a birch panel, with a blade-like buildup of paint (mixed with marble) that juts in from the left edge toward the center. A border of scarlet gouache runs along the image’s bottom edge, which has the effect of solidifying the piece’s handmade paper support into a sculptural object.īlurring the distinctions between two- and three-dimensional artworks is a recurrent motif of the exhibition. The result is a selection of work that is by and large as buoyant and trippy as Katherine Bradford’s “Black Pink Superhero” (2015), a black-caped, black-booted character in a pink leotard, catapulted into a pale blue sky. Katherine Bradford, “Black Pink Superhero” (2015), gouache on handmade paper, 14 x 11 inches (click to enlarge) Calvino’s voice, candid and humble, sentimental and romantic, playful and funny, is alive in these drawings, paintings and sculpture that use concrete experience as a jumping-off point for amused imaginative play. Their work shares an interest in human emotion, otherworldly beauty, and a sense of humor. The artists in this show are not particularly interested in science, science fiction, or astronomy-or maybe they are, it was never discussed, but they have been chosen for a common sensibility. This sort of gamesmanship is not clearly in evidence in the work in Cosmicomics, the exhibition rather, the curator, Vicki Sher (who is also one of the artists), draws upon the less cerebral aspects of Calvino’s style, as she writes in her curatorial statement: The conceit behind Cosmicomics is that each chapter begins with a short, factual (or fancifully scientific) topic, such as the sun’s orbit around the galaxy or the exact moment of the Big Bang, and the story that follows becomes a riff on that. Ellen Siebers, “Untitled” (2015), oil/marble, ground/birch panel, 18 x 18 inches (click to enlarge)Ĭalvino, like his colleagues in the Oulipo group of experimental writers, reveled in formalist games, as in If on a Winter ’ s Night a Traveler (1979), a novel he composed in the form of opening chapters from fictitious books.
0 kommentar(er)
