KAREN WILKIN
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know the medium is listed as bronze. The sculptures are built in steel, then
fabricated in bronze, because while Steiner values the structural possibilities of
steel, he values even more highly the surface and color of bronze. The fre–
quent use of curving, light-diffusing forms in these recent works, I suspect,
has to do with his knowledge of the sculptures' eventual material.
The best works were the most economical and, at the same time , the
most aggressive, formally - for lack of a better word. The low, crouching
blocky structure,
The Bull,
with its seductive, warm patina, seemed to carry
with it the memory of a confining cube, boldly sliced, pared away and pene–
trated. Its generous arches, cylinders and plates appeared to grab and charge
a chunk of space, not merely to occupy it. The large
Passage (for Andrei
Sakharov)
was similar in spirit, but looser, like a struggle between a cube and
a sphere that has resulted in the virtual destruction of both forms.
Passage
seemed a little bony, skeletal, compared to
The Bull;
the greater thickness of
component parts, in the smaller piece, was beneficial.
Steiner's smaller sculptures were generally chunkier than his large ones,
which subverted some of their innate refinement and added a helpful tough–
ness.
Minimum Wheel
was one of the best, with its implications of measure–
ment and comparison, of the play oflike against almost-like and void against
almost-solid. It was comparable to
The Bull
in its four-square economy. A
wonderful, sturdy little piece,
Horizontal Lid,
was like an homage to
Gonzalez's celebrated
Head, called "The Tunnel,"
with the thinness and
fragility of Gonzalez's sculpture translated into Steiner's language of cool ge–
ometry and elegant restraint. "Elegance" and "restraint" are key words in
discussing Steiner. Much of his best work treads a delicate line between re–
finement and free-wheeling invention. When Steiner fails, his work can ap–
pear cautious and over-finished, but when he succeeds, as he clearly does in
the best of his recent work, he manages to transcend any such considerations
and produce sculptures ofastonishing fineness, limpidity and unexpectedness.
Bryan Hunt, whose bronzes, like frozen waterfalls, won him consider–
able attention in the past few years, showed mixed media, ephemeral-ap–
pearing works at Blum Helman Gallery in May. Unless I am confusing Hunt
with someone else, the forms of these delicate constructions, like attenuated
airplane fuselages, harked back to his own earlier concerns. Individually, the
flimsy structures, light shining through their papery surfaces, frail struts
making their presence felt through tile skin, were quite appealing. They have
strong associations with canoes, with their elegant ribs, or early airplanes,
held together with baling wire and glue, and the (literal) twist Hunt gives
these allusions is often extremely effective. But the relentless sameness of
size, length, proportion and the height at which the works were mounted
undermined rather than accentuated their individuality and trivialized the
