Sculpture and Photography Lead Sponder Gallery’s Art Southampton Booth
At Art Southampton 2015, Sponder Gallery presents a selection of photography and sculpture by a number of artists from its stable who draw from previous generations when creating their work. The artists span a diverse array of styles, with modern abstract works, figurative paintings, and Pop art all on view.
Works by Jane Manus and Jedd Novatt represent two of the gallery’s most abstract offerings. Novatt’s bronze sculpture, Chaos San Sebastian (2008), is a complex weave of geometric forms: interconnected bars create haphazardly stacked boxes. The piece resembles a skeletal exploration of Modernist sculpture—such as those of David Smith—in which the outline of its form is all that remains. Manus’s sculpture, Jennifer (2008), more closely recalls the work of Tony Smith, with geometric forms bent into configurations that evoke the human body. On top of two black-painted aluminum cubes—tilted on their respective edges—rests a metal plate, torqued into an angular curl.
Many viewers might recognize at least a few books on the shelves in Max Steven Grossman’s photocollage Arte V5, which combines snapshots of several different bookshelves into a towering landscape made of exhibition catalogues and other art tomes. “I think people enjoy these images because they’re relatable,” Grossman has said. “They’re welcoming, and the relationship each viewer experiences is almost immediately personal.” A similar work, Roxy Paine’s Soap for a Lifetime (1993) collects hundreds of bars of soap in various colors and shapes. The piece lies somewhere between painting and sculpture, recalling colored grids by Ellsworth Kelly or Fred Tomaselli’s pill paintings.
Two figurative sculptures complete the presentation, including a work by Mauro Perucchetti, called 0.5 Jelly Baby (2012). Cast in translucent, colored resin, the piece depicts three jolly, plump, cartoonish characters, standing side-by-side and smiling. Light passes through them and they are reflected on one another’s surface, creating complex interactions of color and illumination. Finally, Ernest Trova’s Seated Figure II (1988) is reminiscent of Alberto Giacometti’s early Surrealist work. A woman seated at a table leans over the surface. Although the table, chair, and her body from the hips down are depicted naturally, her upper half is broken into planes and abstracted geometric forms, suggestive of movement.
—Stephen Dillon
Visit Sponder Gallery at Art Southampton 2015, Jul. 9–12, 2015.
Explore Sponder Gallery and the 2015 Hamptons Fairs on Artsy.