Since the early ’70s Jackie Ferrara has carved a niche for herself among the post-Minimalist artists investigating the relationship between sculpture and architecture. Working with narrow wood slats—pine, poplar, and birch are recurrent favorites—she has fashioned a category of forthright integral objects.
These recent works offer Ferrara’s most challenging vision to date. In structural terms, A233 Borbek, 1982, like the other pieces here, lays itself out to the viewer. Distant observation reveals the precisely proportioned stackings of parts, while a close examination shows the heads of the nails used in fixing together the wood elements; the viewer sees all there is. Nevertheless, a hard-to-define psychic aura dominates one’s sense of the work, and this psychic sensation is a direct result of A233 Borbek’s emphatic convincingness as image and as constructed presence. In rapid succession its shape brings to mind a stove, some kind of house with chimney, and a run of other figurative associations; these associations are animated by a sparkling interplay of shadows and contrasts in color and texture, creating the illusion that there is more here than meets the eye.
Architectural references abound in Ferrara’s work, particularly to pyramidal, doorway, and courtyard forms of an ancient, non-Western variety. But any sensation of the past fails to dominate the overwhelming contemporaneity of Ferrara’s distinctive creations. A233 Borbek and the other pieces here offer viewing that liberates the imagination but ultimately returns the experience to the visual and emotive politics of the now.
—Ronny Cohen
