Jim Lambie

Who would have guessed that ceramic sculptures of birds (especially ones reproduced, many times their original size, from personal knickknacks) could transcend both Pop and the flighty world of pastoral kitsch? Executed with equal parts flair and restraint, Scottish artist Jim Lambie’s paean to the slow break of morning is sly and poetic, using unpretentious materials to achieve thrilling ends. In the gallery’s small back room, settled atop Chops, 2002/2006, a simple, impeccable floor installation comprising crisscrosses of black vinyl tape, Lambie has organized three large sculptures into a tightly constructed field of visual pleasure. In the far corner rests Deep Sleep, 2006, in which a parrot, poured with slick, black paint and perched atop a mirrored pedestal, faces a Rorschach blot constructed of black T-shirts and fiberboard. Nearby is Waiting for the Sun, 2006, a large hawk covered in aluminum tape set atop another mirrored pedestal. Channeling the architectonic habits of Robert Gober, a pale blue door hangs midway up the wall opposite, behind which has been pasted a black shoe—the cautionary remains of a high kick gone awry? The splendid centerpiece to the room’s arrangement, Dawn Chorus, 2006, is a vibrant, psychedelic hummingbird slathered in drips of runny paint—a pastel Pollock car crash. To top the piece off, the whole heavy thing was set atop a circle of variously colored spray-paint cans—nozzles facing outward—causing them to discharge their contents and leaving the surrounding floor a radiant chromatic mess. Action painting rarely looks so sublime.