Ronald J. Onorato

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  print January 1980

  “Corners”

  The artists included in the “Corners” exhibition come to the theme from such widely disparate starting points that any explicit overview of the issue is made almost impossible. Although all the works in the show (with the exception of one or two) have at least some vague connection to either an inside or outside corner, only two or three of the artists extend our ability to comprehend the concept of “corner” fully.

  Several objects do focus our attention toward the intersection of two wall planes. Richard Artschwager’s Corner 11, 1964–1979, is a marvelous, quirky object that might as well be a

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  print October 1979

  Fritz Buehner

  An exhibition long overdue in Boston, Six Sculptors reflected various modes of sculpture-making, running the gamut of current idioms from free-standing objects and wall reliefs to architectonic constructions and ephemeral installations.

  Three of the artists are object-makers. FRITZ BUEHNER’s Nonce, a tightly coiled wooden helix, alternately revealed and concealed the logic of its making. One of a recent series, Nonce sat dense and solid when approached from either of its flat, layered sides. Walking its baseless perimeter, however, the viewer sees the webwork solid open up. On either flank, the

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  print October 1979

  John Avery Newman

  An exhibition long overdue in Boston, Six Sculptors reflected various modes of sculpture-making, running the gamut of current idioms from free-standing objects and wall reliefs to architectonic constructions and ephemeral installations.

  The other reliefs in the show, by JOHN AVERY NEWMAN, are flat painted wood constructions. These hedge on expected definitions of plane, projection, continuity and separation, line and volume. Here too, a graphic sense captures many of these dichotomies. Newman's structures are armatures for his drawing in line, color and shadow. The stark white verticals of

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  print October 1979

  Ed Rothfarb

  An exhibition long overdue in Boston, Six Sculptors reflected various modes of sculpture-making, running the gamut of current idioms from free-standing objects and wall reliefs to architectonic constructions and ephemeral installations.

  By far the two most impressive efforts in the exhibition were created by artists who constructed their own spaces. ED ROTHFARB’s In leiunio et Fletu is a freestanding unit in one corner of the largest gallery built of gray plasterboard panels over a wooden frame. Within a primarily architectural idiom, Rothfarb’s piece addresses his participatory audience

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  print October 1979

  Alan Motch

  An exhibition long overdue in Boston, Six Sculptors reflected various modes of sculpture-making, running the gamut of current idioms from free-standing objects and wall reliefs to architectonic constructions and ephemeral installations.

  The small skeletal relief platforms of ALAN MOTCH make all too obvious references to industrial structures and engineered frames. These are not concerned with the same type of brute force required to build actual trestles or wharves; in fact, they almost negate load-bearing gravity. Precious in scale, they sit lightly on otherwise blank whitewalls. But because

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  print October 1979

  “Six Sculptors”

  An exhibition long overdue in Boston, Six Sculptors reflected various modes of sculpture-making, running the gamut of current idioms from free-standing objects and wall reliefs to architectonic constructions and ephemeral installations.

  —Ronald J. Onorato

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  print October 1979

  Lee Newton

  An exhibition long overdue in Boston, Six Sculptors reflected various modes of sculpture-making, running the gamut of current idioms from free-standing objects and wall reliefs to architectonic constructions and ephemeral installations.

  In a totally different realm of sculptural conception, LEE NEWTON defines her own arena by laying out a horizontal and a vertical working space. As with her earlier works one feels compelled to read this arrangement for its linear narrative content since her multipartite ensembles have a strong theatrical ambience—stage, backdrop, props, etc. This particular

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  print October 1979

  Jeffrey Schiff

  An exhibition long overdue in Boston, Six Sculptors reflected various modes of sculpture-making, running the gamut of current idioms from free-standing objects and wall reliefs to architectonic constructions and ephemeral installations.

  The most visually exciting piece in the exhibition was that of JEFFREY SCHIFF. Like Rothfarb, Schiff created his own space but with more ephemeral means—he made no objects, he built no structures. In one sense, the space Schiff used was given as he chose to rework part of the remodeled interior of the institute’s 19th-century building. His chosen area, the main

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  print Summer 1979

  Robert Rohm

  Objects, things—Robert Rohm has equated them with sculpture-making for much of his career. In his most recent show, finely crafted and carpentered ensembles of wood, conduit, rope and lead echo a vocabulary of forms and materials refined over the past decade. Rohm considers his objects as primary things—not in the sense of minimal reductions but as hermetic, solid units, entities in themselves.

  Every move made—binding with rope, bolting and fastening, choosing heavy, massive materials and using large-scale volumes and voids—lends these works an assertiveness that dominates any other approach we

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  print March 1979

  Richard Fleischner

  Adjacent to the University of Massachusetts football stadium in Amherst stands an 8-foot-tall chain-link fence encompassing an area some 60 feet square. Containing neither the tennis courts nor the electrical transformers we might expect within such industrial fencing, the metallic webwork is, instead, the perimeter of Richard Fleischner’s newest sited work, Chain Link Maze.

  Surely the experience of walking through a convoluted corridor flanked by a mesh fence doesn’t sound like anybody’s idea of a pleasurable or engaging experience. Over the past few years, however, several artists—Bruce Nauman

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  print December 1978

  Illusive Spaces: The Art of Mary Miss

  IN A SHORT TEXT, “Of Exactitude in Science,” Jorge Luis Borges recounts the tale of an Empire where

  . . . the craft of Cartography attained such Perfection that the Map of a Single province covered the space of an entire City, and the Map of the Empire itself an entire Province. In the course of Time, these extensive maps were found somehow wanting, and so the College of Cartographers evolved a Map of the Empire that was of the same Scale as the Empire and that coincided with it point for point.¹

  For more than a decade Mary Miss has conceived and constructed a variety of singular works that in

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  print December 1978

  Ed Mayer

  Ed Mayer makes precise structures. No, that’s not quite right—Mayer’s structures are precise, piles of wooden laths, criss-crossed log-cabin fashion. In the six major works exhibited recently along with several drawings and prints, it became apparent that the artist does not so much impart mathematical clarity to his materials as draw that accuracy from their physical limits.

  In a work like Glide, 1978, we are acutely aware of the delicacy of Mayer’s method, of fine boundaries traced between the friction of the nubby wood surface, the weight of the cross strips and the pitch of each upright.