ArtSeen
Corban Walker
Grid Stack
PaceWildenstein February 2–March 10, 2007
Corban Walker, “Grid Stack 2” (2007). Clear float glass and Diamante glass. 37 1/2” x 24” x 16 1/4”. Courtesy PaceWildenstein, New York. Photo: Ellen Labenski / Courtesy PaceWildenstein, New York.Imagine that Yao Ming, upon his retirement from the NBA, becomes a sculptor. His gallery issues a press release on his exhibition, and just in case you don’t know who he is, talks about the artist’s height and how it affects his work: obviating the use of a step-ladder, skewing a certain tallishness, and so on. This would, of course, be patently silly. When Pace Wildenstein does the inverse with four-foot-tall sculptor Corban Walker, it’s silly and cynical.
Walker’s sculptures profess an aesthetic of minimalism with a maximal accumulation of parts: a zigzagging fence of interwoven aluminum bars, and rectangular pieces of glass stacked in alternating patterns, forming cubes or a ramp. The glass pieces are more challenging than the metal ones. The patterned green and blue rays reflected by the edges of the glass are both visually intriguing and coldly alienating, their basketlike repetitiveness creating an effect that is anything but folksy. Placed discretely around the cavernous gallery, they seem to thrum with an ominous mechanical intelligence, like a futuristic god-idol out of —its endless reflections seem to illuminate it from the inside—could be a feet-mauling prop from a sadistic Busby Berkeley number. None of the sculptures are over 44 inches, and so what? The uniformity of their design precludes any desire to “(crouch) down to get the full effect,” as the press release declares.
It’s a given that Jackson Pollock’s use of the floor is a factor in the making of his drip paintings, but would any serious art historian consider Diego Rivera’s girth to have had a bearing on his work? There must be a line between an artist’s process and his physicality. Pace should give Walker more credit. The work is stringent, if not lovable, and I imagine that so elegant an artist does not enjoy his personal ghettoization.
RECOMMENDED ARTICLES
Andrea del Verrocchio: Sculptor and Painter of Renaissance Florence
By Christian KleinbubNOV 2019 | ArtSeen
About midway through the National Gallery’s exhibition Andrea del Verrocchio: Sculptor and Painter of Renaissance Florence, you find yourself standing in front of a beautiful young woman carved from marble that has mellowed to a honey-brown hue.
Hands On: Working with Artist-Endowed Foundations and Trusts
By Patterson SimsDEC 18-JAN 19 | Critics Page
Working with artist-initiated entities charged with stewarding a creative legacy, both artist-endowed foundations (charitable tax-exempt organizations) and artists’ trusts (private, non-exempt entities), has been the core of my professional life since 2009 and a deeply gratifying culmination of nearly fifty years of work in the visual arts.
A Hunger Artist
By Betsy KaufmanMAY 2019 | Critics Page
On my first date with an artist who would eventually become my husband, I said, “Look at me, look at me, look at me!” I am also an artist and I wanted him to know, from the beginning, that I not only live for my work, but that I need an audience to view that work. Eventually my husband gave me “A Hunger Artist” by Franz Kafka.
‘The Work Is Never Done’ at MoMA: enacting and obscuring archives
By Benedict NguyenDEC 18-JAN 19 | Dance
Beyond the title itself, there’s something about the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA)’s exhibition Judson Dance Theater: The Work is Never Done, running from mid-September 2018 to early February 2019, that brought up meta thoughts about what work I’m doing. What could this writing, this work, do?
