Ron Desmett - Jim Toia
dal 10/10/2012 al 9/11/2012
Segnalato da
10/10/2012
Ron Desmett - Jim Toia
Kim Foster Gallery, New York
Eccentric Beauty. The art of glass is usually a quest for perfection. In Desmett's case, it is the imperfections that are glorified. His glass works are predominantly black and amorphous. In Toia's work the elegant, silent resolutions of the earlier forms are replaced by nearly anthropomorphic, individual.
The art of glass is usually a quest for perfection. In Ron Desmett's case, it is the imperfections that are glorified. His glass works are predominantly black and amorphous. They deny the precious enjoyment of translucent glass. Desmett is not interested in transparency or color, but rather texture, form and surface. These are glass sculptures that mock functionality.
Desmett walks through forests looking for rotten trees, searching for the contours and forms that will define his glass work. He crafts these monumental forms by blowing into the hollowed out trunks of walnut trees, filling the void with his breath. The inflated molten glass takes on the texture of the inside of the wood mold, infusing nature with fresh life.
The artist relishes the immediacy of glassblowing. While the process feels slightly out-of-control, spontaneous and quick, Desmett makes all the relevant artistic decisions. The inherent dynamism that was present at the time of creation inhabits the artwork.
The opacity accentuates the works' profile, volume and textured surface as the viewer looks around and not through each piece. Much like the rough and course beauty of Japanese tea bowls, Ron Desmett's glass sculptures are a form of eccentric beauty.
Ron Desmett lives and works in Oakdale, PA with his wife and partner, Kathleen Mulcahy. For the past 30 years they have worked as independent artists on projects for installation in private glass collections, homes, corporate offices, public art projects and solo exhibitions throughout the United States. They developed and helped build the Pittsburgh Glass Center. Their collaborative work, Crossings 1982, was acquired by the Renwick Galleries at the Smithsonian Institution of Washington D.C. Desmett's Lidded Trunk Vessel #7 was also acquired by the Renwick Galleries in 2007. In 2010, the Corning Museum of Glass acquired Lidded Trunk Vessel #22. His work is also in the collection of the Carnegie Museum of Art in Pittsburgh.
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Jim Toia - Inky Cap Panels
The patience, the acceptance, the attention bordering on reverence required of an artist working directly with natural phenomena must focus attention not on what is, but on what is happening. Knowing and feeling exactly how little to participate is crucial. Orpheus leading Euridice up into our world was required not to look, or lose everything. The crux of this artist's journey is nearly all in the act of looking, of seeing, of making visible -- but the risk is there.
Looking into the pale feather-stroke flares and swirls of his mushroom drawings feels like looking through eons of time. The eager spores' passionate wings and curls seem to waft limitlessly in the dark spaces of the papers. This continuous, graceful eagerness, of course, is actually procreation.
In Jim Toia's more immediate, enigmatic networks of spiderwebs brought to stillness, there is the mystery of order, of the infinite repetitions in the patterns of lines and movements of almost invisible delicacy captured, stopped. He is the trapper's nemesis -- and glorifier.
Now, with the inky-cap mushroom panels, Toia hits more expressionistic notes. The very liquidity released -- its staining, running and pooling -- and the cruder, more ungainly shapes of the caps themselves -- has provoked the artist into a more active relationship. The elegant, silent resolutions of the earlier forms are replaced by nearly anthropomorphic, individual presences and by an active give-and-take between artist and material. The awe of the earlier forms is replaced by gutsier, earthier shapes extended or modified here and there by the artist's brush. This engaging theatre of "characters" have their own verve -- and, perhaps, tragedies.
Naomi Spector
Image: Shift at the Pole, 2012. Blown black glass construction with gold gilded form, etched and lacquered. H21" x L23" x D16".
Reception: Thursday, October 11, 6-8 pm
Kim Foster Gallery
529 West 20th Street New York, NY 10011
Tuesday - Saturday 11 am to 6 pm