Review: Don't Look Back Exhibition
A CELEBRATION of the magic of sculptural form within a gallery context, sculpture, results in a captivating first room and bodes well as one journey’s further into the gallery space. For one is met with a variety of perceptual and conceptual bits of information through the very presence of these objects qua sculpture that challenge and proceed (as if there is a logic) to evoke a reaction.
However, what about inanimate matter marked with the markings of the artist – shall it speak or move? Evidently not. Yet like the ability silicon has to hold or conduct information, so the (sculptural) objects carry or contain, which is to say create a certain energy. Now, just as in physics this energy consists of atoms, subatomic particles and various forces as such, so the material object so formed and/or considered, carries some message.
Boshoff’s work in Belfast black granite entitled “flag stone” is peculiar, yet powerful. One senses this “flag stone” is a remnant of a bygone era, not merely dense or condensed energy, for etched into it are the Latin words: “Gutta Cavat ladidem non VI sed saepe cadendo” which translated reads as “a drop of water hollows the stone, not by force, but by continuously dripping”, a saying attributed to Ovid. Indeed, water can soften and penetrate stone, seeming in defiance of logic and any impatience one may harbour.
But before that work registered as it were, Kim Lieberman’s installation sculpture of blood red cable lace and other mediums suggested a web-like effect which is created within and around the gallery space, even enveloping the viewer somewhat. It seems to be a weaving of order and pattern that evolve and create certain structures; threads that coalesce, like capillaries, some convergent and some divergent. The red lattice work somehow implies a sort of gravity field, the fabric of space-time as it were, a vortex of sorts so that perhaps, I conjecture, the artist intended the viewer to sense a pervading energy not only as sculptural object but as a “representation” of some force, even that which pervades space-time itself.
Ledelle Moe’s “Lament” is robust such that the central figures are surrounded by shattered fragments (sparks?). Their mammoth form, the face appearing to be subject to pain, still seem to indicate a struggle with mortality as one’s body simply waists away. This reading is based on the fact that since the figures and stone fragments seem to be composed of the same “stuff” that whether as human form or a stone, there is a continuity. This might quell one’s fear of death (somewhat) and thence one hopes the figures will find joy and embrace life.
Stephan Erasmus’s simple what I call linear construct in wood, perhaps suggests a way to activate the state of mind hoped for above: One cannot determine if cosmos or order has been reached or not or whether it is through intention and design or chance and caprice. Yet this simple “sculpture” is an algorithm of the potential of the struggle concerning such questions that may lead to a sense that perhaps there is beauty that abounds.
I managed to get a glimpse or preview of the work of highly acclaimed multi-disciplinary artist Coby Kennedy entitled “Skin of the thug” showing until 27th May. It appears highly innovative and visually satisfying.
And beyond sculpture to the sculptural-paintings of Kennedy, there was a video piece by Kendall Buster which was fascinating as it sped through architectural images and as the forms seem to amalgamate, so weird designs and patterns emerge. The geometries of the architectural forms curiously give way to an organic, endless flow. Is there then a centre, a point of architectural stability? Yet that may not even be desirable, as one knows the dangers of a centre: one aesthetic, one style, one artistic form and so on. Rather, and in relation to the sculptural exhibition, one may surmise that just as there is no so-called International style, one monolithic aesthetic or so it would seem in architecture, so there is not, it would appear in the sculptural tradition. Of course such observations are debatable.
“Don’t look back”, the title of the sculpture show makes reference to the following words by Bob Dylan: “shake the dust off your feet, don’t look back. Nothing now can hold you down, nothing that you lack” and in keeping with that, such encouragement may not be far off the mark.