This show featured some of the most energized abstract art seen here this season. James Biederman’s painted wood sculptures and mixed media drawings, all executed in 1982, present an exciting new pictorial dimension of his vision.
The sculptures are made of different-sized, angled wedges of wood screwed together in diagonally aligned, accordion like cascades. Installed at about eye level, these twisting, turning objects have a pictorial dynamism (a direct result of the fast-time specificity of their structures) which creates strong and immediate sensations of forms in jet-propelled flight. The vivid coloration of the planar elements—hot bright yellows and oranges highlighted by white are favored—also sharpens the linear and spatial impact. At the same time the vibrant, textural surfaces add a provocative extraperceptual dimension to these asymmetrical sculptures, encouraging an emotively tinged, not purely formal reading of them.
The drawings enjoy a symbiotic relationship with the sculpture. Biederman works on large sheets (the average dimensions are 60 by 40 inches) and uses a variety of materials, including gouache and conté crayon, to activate the surfaces with explosive compositions. The artist reveals himself as a bold, instinctual, gestural, but informative and controlled markmaker; his spiky, distended planes, similar to those of the sculptures, are heavily outlined and fragmented into syncopated, zigzag, rhythmical shapes with figurative overtones. Hot tones with stark contrasts—greens, pinks, blues, grays, blacks, and whites are favored—add to the pictorial impact of the imagery.
—Ronny Cohen
