Craig Kauffman’s art, although by no means classically formal, is prophetic, and as an art for a future environment considerably improved by recent moves. He continues to repeat that curious form—variously described as an erotic thermometer or a phallus designed in a windtunnel—but now rendered in plastic colored relief, the whole piece cast as a single unit and more properly called a wall-hanging than a picture. Their ivory-smooth surfaces and jello-ed industrial colors are extraordinarily beautiful, creating a moving argument for artistic use of technological materials. Cool, bright, and hedonistic, the material gives voice to Kauffman’s statement as never before.
As suggestive of a total environment, Kauffman’s pictures would do appropriately for the walls of Huxley’s “Brave New World.” One has to make of that what he will. It is at least more attractive than the gloomy apocalypse of nee-mannerist figurative art all labeled, “The End is Near.”
—William Wilson
