Timothy Woodman’s oil-painted aluminum reliefs continue to hold up a provocative mirror to both reality and fantasy. The subjects of these works, mostly from 1982, range from the grandly mythological to the merely mundane; they include figures such as Atlas and Midas as well as anonymous contemporary types—a Blind Person, for example—along with a broad array of activities as varied from each other as are Subduing a Gunman, 1981, Hanging Up a Coat, and Training a Tiger.
Woodman cuts and paints thin curved sheets of aluminum into figures and props, which are installed directly on the wall. Visually, his work depends on sophisticated formal devices, including perspectival distortions, radical simplifications, elisions or fragmentations of facial features and body parts, and the distension of the contours of shoulders and limbs. These features are best appreciated in the larger-scale group reliefs, treating urban themes. Street Scene, a work whose dimensions are 51 by 62 1/2 by 12 inches, is representative; in this diagonally disposed composition, which appears to stride off the wall into the viewer’s space, Woodman depicts, without being didactic or pretentious, the fragmentation as well as the dynamic economic and ethnic mix at the source of the stimulating, frenzied pace of modern urban life. Though boldly colored, Street Scene, like the other works here, is more quiet than raucous; while we recognize the energetic activities being performed by the relief figures, we sense in them a self-absorbed alienation. What is finally at the source of the strong appeal of Woodman’s works is the emphatically voyeuristic role they demand that the viewer play.
—Ronny Cohen
