Karen Wilkin
AT THE GALLERIES
Even by today's pluralistic standards, the past season was
noticeably varied. A series of sculpture shows, for example, ranged from
minimalism-with-a-difference to lush biomorphism, to elegant austerity, to
grotesque modishness. They suggested that the constructed tradition of Pi–
casso, Gonzalez and their descendents is still healthy, and that so is the tradi–
tion of modelling and casting they rejected. So is the exploration of un–
expected materials. So, alas, is kitsch. An equally wide-ranging group of
painting exhibitions provided evidence that similar diversity of intent (and of
result) prevails in other disciplines. There has been the usual crop of
overblown and overrated shows, underrated ones, bores, disappointments
and a few wonderful surprises, as well.
One of the surprises was the February exhibition by the Canadian
sculptor Andre Fauteux, at 49th Parallel, in conjunction with his Toronto
dealer, Gallery One. Fauteux, who used to exhibit fairly regularly in ew
York and was the recipient of a Greenburger award a few years ago, has
not had a solo show here for ten years, so it was a particular pleasure to see
his most recent work. Over the past fifteen years or so, Fauteux has devel–
oped an individual vocabulary based on apparently ideal geometric figures,
warped or subtly nudged out of true. It's a legacy of his minimalist origins,
but just when you think you have grasped the structural principles of one of
Fauteux's pieces you discover something wholly unexpected. Symmetry
turns out to be asymmetry; Euclidian-derived shapes turn out to be
unnameable, invented configurations. And so on.
In the past, Fauteux often took as his starting point found objects that
puzzled or challenged him: odd shapes left over from cut-outs, insistent
drums, complex solids of obscure function. He could usually transform these
uncompromising fragments and make them take their places within his sculp–
tures, but recently, he had begun to feel constrained, rather than provoked,
by ready-made elements.
As
well, a series of sojourns in Spain, mostly in
Catalonia, in the last few years, brought new influences into play, mainly ar–
chitecture, in the form of the Romanesque churches of the region, and the
powerful tradition of Catalan ironwork. Explicit notions of interior and exte–
rior, translated into sculptural, as opposed
to
architectural terms, began to
preoccupy him, along with equally explicit notions about making and shaping,
as opposed to selecting and placing.
