As an African-American artist of international distinction, Richard Hunt can only be compared to Romare Bearden in terms of his creative influence and the inspirational force of his achievement. His formidable reputation tends to loom above his work, occasionally distracting the viewer. Yet in these two shows, it was clear that Hunt's ability to create dynamic, very often thrilling sculptural displays remains undiminished.
Hunt came of age in Chicago in the late of 1950s. His work has an exaggerated, abstract gestural quality that suggests emotional release; experiencing it is very much like confronting a 3-D Abstract-Expressionist url scurt painting. With their sweeping organic lines slashing outward and upward as if out of control, his pieces virtually move through space, fluid, lucid and active, full of cast or welded add-ons and metallic forms that dive through still more layers of fiendishly jagged fragments and ruptures. Although purely abstract, Hunt's works allude to a variety of the artist's interests and influences (through both forms and titles). It's not surprising that the work often seems to embody the sense of both freedom and looming danger, explosive power and spiritual exuberance, that can most clearly be linked with the emotional and historical landscape of African-American life.
But ultimately it is Hunt's sculptural intelligence, his virtuosic metal craft and the bravura improvisational character of the work's underlying draftsmanship that makes most of his sculpture impossible to resist. Even the large pieces seem like briskly conceived drawings lyrics - song lyrics in space, impossibly liquid and charismatically flexible.
Downtown at Andre Zarre, the mostly small recent works often suggested a series of multi-dimensional platforms in space. But small or large, Hunt's pieces seem to move, transforming themselves as the viewer walks around them. Despite their various extra-art associations, these works are pure form, pure drawing energy, nuanced, kinetic and full of free host - free host service finicky little nooks and crannies.
The exhibition at the Studio Museum in Harlem featured a number of large works such as Flintlock Fantasy, a piece which projects a formal sense of that classic armament in the midst of an explosion of metallic waves; or Sculptural Improvisation #2, a swiveling central form surrounded by jutting limbs above and swirling limbs below. The large outdoor sculptures of rusting Cor-Ten steel, however, lack the soaring emotionalism and manic detail forum that animate so much of Hunt's work, and they sat stolidly and unremarkably in the museum's sculpture garden. The Studio Museum show also included prints, maquettes and studies for a number of public works including the Eagle Columns in Chicago and a particularly dramatic model for a Middle Passage Memorial.
It's helpful to know that British artist Francis Cape began his career as a master's apprentice in woodcarving, and has since worked extensively as a carpenter and expert cabinet builder. This exhibition featured a single, large-scale wooden cabinet unit, Cabinet No.30 (580 Broadway), that hugged much of an entire wall. Otherwise the gallery's main room was empty.
Cape's work doesn't just refer to furniture. Instead it seems almost to be furniture. But without any practical use it's propelled toward sculpture and interior architecture. In this piece, several built-in doors, which imply storage compartments, have no knobs and can't be opened -- an unusual combination of futility and pure visuality. With its aversion to flourishes, its straight lines and clean geometries, and its monochromatic yellow-gold color, this meticulously constructed fleshlight work (made by Cape himself, who doesn't farm out his ideas to fabricators) also has a spare, minimalist appeal.
Cape has remarked that near-identical English Victorian row houses (both their interiors and exteriors) have been a major influence on his esthetic. What also seems pertinent is the unadorned dignity of Shaker furniture and the elegant practicality of Federal-period design. Whatever its influences, Cape's genre-rearranging work is complex and impressive. Painting also figures prominently. Every inch of the surface has been painstakingly coated with the same standard-issue Benjamin Moore paint, which proves surprisingly supple and lush. Here, Cape's method is far closer to a craftsperson's umblemished precision than to idiosyncratic painterly style; he seems alert to the historically anonymous work of craftspeople, who have typically received scant individual acclaim.
It was impressive how sensitively such a massive work fit into its architectural surroundings. Slight spaces between either side of the unit and the walls, and between its top and the ceiling, acted as a kind of frame; in addition, the work subtly responded to the slightly golden color of the gallery's own varnished hardwood floor. A ridge of a pilaster in the corner of the gallery was repeated as a decorative line across the top of Cape's unit; the top of the work was also in dialogue with molding at the junction between the gallery's ceiling and wall. This piece was convincingly site-specific, as Cape's works tend to be. Also included were a much smaller wall-mounted cabinet in the back room and several ink-on-paper studies of the main piece -- drawings intriguing in their own right.
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Since the mid-'70s, Michael Smith has been developing the arts of blandness and pathos, mostly through the invented persona of a loser in denial called Mike. The disparate works in which Smith appears as Mike constitute a variety of theater that focuses on the establishment of character, scene and mood more than on plot. Last fall, at the Brooklyn gallery Pierogi 2000, Mike recounted, in installation, performance and video, the honor of being invited to apply for inclusion in an organization called Outstanding Young Men in America -- and his discovery that he was actually past the age limit. Two years earlier, Mike and a collaborator packed the house at Jay Gorney's SoHo gallery for two performances of "Adult Entertainment," a sort of faux-naif vaudeville routine.
In this latest installment, at Lauren Wittels, there was no performance per se. But with an installation so thorough and convincing that some visitors thought the gallery had moved and been replaced by a tacky business, Smith reached a pinnacle of achievement. The meticulously complete environment started at the gallery door, where photocopied notices stuck up with duct tape promised "our valued customers" that "Musco" was not going out of business but only relocating. Musco, one learned inside the doors, is a "music-color" firm, purveyor of light-show and other illumination equipment, supposedly founded in 1969 by Mike, along with Joshua White. Although Mike is fictional, White is a real person who once made light shows at the Fillmore East and who collaborated with Smith for this exhibition.
Images of slow but earnest Mike were seen everywhere -- in the Musco commercial running on the TV by the sales counter, which told the story of the firm's founding and its merchandise innovations, on the detailed new-product announcements hanging on the wall in plastic sleeves, on the bank of fake video monitors in the "display" room, in snapshots in the Musco office. The office walls were papered with photos, diagrams, posters and a framed dollar bill. The desk was smothered with three Rolodexes, a full ashtray, a file folder of bills. Shelves were stuffed with supply catalogues and draped with chain loops of color chips, while gel samples covered the switched-on light table. In the "display" room a mirror ball, strobes and other devices did their razzle dazzle above a table piled with discounted merchandise.
Consistent with Smith's notion of theater, the installation lacked a conclusion, although it did offer a chronology (Musco's attempts to keep up with the times) and a modicum of suspense (would Musco survive?). As the set for this representation, the installation was not merely a sensory environment but had the depth of an individual and social history. But what tied the work together was the dramatis persona of Mike, the schlemiel Everyman, who was mostly seen alone and plodding. A mix of Willy Loman and a neurotic from a Woody Allen movie, Mike follows the rules for personal and business success, without success. He is both funny and tragic. Only as a creation is he masterly.