Note on John Henry at Sonja Roesch

John Henry, sculpture in front of Sonja Roesch Gallery

John Henry is an abstract metal sculptor, belonging pretty much to the same school of sculpture as Anthony Caro and Mark Di Suvero. Henry is ten years younger that Di Suvero and twenty years younger than Caro, and presumably is a lot more active than these two. Still, it feels like he belongs to art history now. If you like welded-metal abstract sculptures (and I do), then this is a show worth seeing.

That said, I noticed something strange on opening night. You see this a lot at openings, and I know it sometimes infuriates artists and gallerists. You see people not looking at the art.


People carefully avoiding a red John Henry sculpture

The sculptures inside the Sonja Roesch Gallery were more-or-less the same scale as the people in the gallery. So it's like they were the uncool kids who were being excluded in junior high.


Blue John Henry sculpture being ostentatiously ignored

What's up with this? I go to openings and sometimes I feel like I'm the only guy looking at the art. But usually there will be at least a few others checking the art out. But at this show it was brutal the way the sculptures were universally avoided.


Yellow John Henry wallflower, hopelessly waiting to be asked to dance

I felt a little sorry for them.

One other amusing thing about the John Henry exhibit was his truck.


John Henry's pickup truck

I think pretty much every sculptor back to Bernini has had a pickup truck. It's simply the most practical vehicle for them. But I have never seen one like this, with information painted on the side. It's as if John Henry is some tradesman--a plumber or electrician. So if we accept that premise, then John Henry is a prole. Maybe that's why all the bourgeous at the opening were ignoring the sculptures--if you were a dinner guest at a friend's house, it would be considered odd if you spent your time chatting with the gardener.

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Note on Anthony Caro: A Life in Sculpture

Anthony Caro: A Life in Sculpture, Julius Bryant, 2004

"I'm not a fan of Calder. There is something too elegant, fragile, in his work."

This is about as negative as Caro allows himself to get. This small book (the title makes it sound massive!) features a wonderful selection of photos and a long, breezy interview with the then 80-year-old Sir Anthony. As it happens, I agree about Calder. But Caro himself is someone whose work has been devalued over the years since his peak in popularity in the 60s.

It seems in the 60s (looking back) there were wars going on between the Clement Greenberg/Michael Fried-approved artists (Caro, Jules Olitski, Kenneth Noland, etc.), the Pop artists, the Minimalists, and (the ultimate winnahs!) the post-Minimalists. In retrospect, that all seems pretty silly. People try hard to pigeonhole artists (is John Chamberlain a "Pop artist"? Is Roger Brown?), but it is their own work that deserves response, not what club they belonged to.

I say this in part because I love Anthony Caro's work. I, like most people, was mainly familiar with his early-60s welded steel sculptures--which I have always liked tremendously. But this little book shows that there is a lot more to see. I will be making a point of seeking out these later Caro pieces.

Indeterminant Authorship at the Temporary Space

Robert Boyd

The show currently up at The Temporary Space was built around the idea of collaboration in a way, but it might be better to say that it was built on the idea of riffing off other people (with their blessings). Curator Jeremy DePrez was so into this idea that for the most part, he didn't credit the individual works in the show. After all, they all were based on interpretations and translations of someone else's work. Hence the title of the show.

The primary tool he used to facilitate this riffing was Flickr. The more I get to know artists around town, the more I understand how important Flickr is to them for finding kindred artists working all around the world. DePrez used these relationships to spark the show.

Much of his own work is based on melted and warped action figures. Several of these were on display on various corners of the Temporary Space.



Jeremy DePrez, untitled, melted plastic toys



Jeremy DePrez, untitled, melted plastic toys

He took pictures of these toys and asked his collaborators to respond to them in their work. One of these collaborators, Geoff Hippenstiel, was just down the hall from DePrez, but made sure he only looked at the Flickr images of the pieces. He explained that consequently he didn't have an idea of the scale of the originals--in fact,  DePrez apparently photographed them made them to look huge. Collaboration via Flickr is bound to have this kind of imperfection. But at the same time, not knowing the scale of the original probably provoked some interesting reactions.

One reaction was by Argentine artist Pablo Boffelli.



Pablo Boffelli, untitled, ink on colored paper

His responded to DePrez's melted action figures by making little drawings of architectural scenarios--perhaps toy architecture. They look playful and remind one a bit of Paul Klee or Boffelli's great countryman, Xul Solar--two artists for whom play was a key feature on their work.

DePrez, getting work back like this from Boffelli and others, then riffed off their work for some sculptural installations. All this riffage could have resulted in hermetic works that only make sense in the presence of the pieces that inspired them. But each piece has its own existence. The adjacent pieces aren't requirements--they are, in the words of DePrez, "art friends."



Jeremy DePrez, untitled, wood and plastic sheeting

The Batman cape was inspired by one of his collaborators. The 2x4s? Maybe he was thinking by Francis Giampietro's recent sculptural work.

One of his collaborators, Mitchell Cumming from Australia, took the melted toys as more of a conceptual starting point. He sent back an essay by Roland Barthes on toys in which Barthes advocates for blocks, which permit the child maximum creative expression, over other kinds of toys. He included a sheet of black shapes which could be combined like blocks. DePrez blew the shapes up and made large plywood versions of them. These were stacked together like a classic kid's fort. But something funny happened on the way to the art gallery.



Mitchell Cumming and Jeremy DePrez, untitled, painted plywood

Instead of looking like a fort, it looks like a minimalist sculpture. I was specifically reminded of Anthony Caro's classic metal pieces. It's hard to leave art history behind in a gallery.



Francis Giampietro and Ivan Monforte, untitled, hair and resin

Francis Giampietro and Ivan Monforte had a rather intimate (but completely long distance) collaboration. These two bricks each contain body hair--one with Giampietro's, one with Monforte's. At the end of the show, the artists will keep the resin brick with the other artist's hair. Obviously this recalls various manhood and brotherhood rituals--becoming blood brother, becoming a "made man," etc. Monforte called this cutting of hair for trade "man-scaping." It was also suggested that the famous piece by Robert Grober with hair growing off a piece of cheese was an influence.