The Brooklyn Rail

Peter Sacks’s latest paintings are forthright, absorbing, memorable. This is partly due to their being incredibly tactile. Even more, they are heroic. We were greeted by this combination of qualities at Sacks’s last show. Then too, the work occupied the Norman Foster-designed spaces at Sperone Westwater astonishingly well. Each of the three galleries contained art concerned with different themes; the types of objects embedded in the wood squares varied from one to another; and the shaped canvases (is this a misnomer because the supports are birch blocks, not canvas?) were not alike either.

During a period that experienced a total solar eclipse and an earthquake centered in New Jersey, Sacks’s art addresses a big topic: the fate of the planet. That’s not something ordinarily associated with abstract paintings. Yet, that’s what these works do. As it is, these “shaped canvases” recall both their brethren from the 1960s as well as altarpieces with wings and predella. Sacks used wood squares so that he could attach dozens of discarded objects to them. And these three-dimensional elements, at one and the same time, reference their past usage and former functions; their present condition as works of art; and their future impact as they return in their new guises to the world at large.

The expansive Outcome and four Spirit Markers were installed in Sperone Westwater’s entrance gallery. They set the tone for the rest of the solo show. For starters, they are jet black. The skinny Spirit Markers are like sentinels. Each of the four is unique, and they suggest that their extended appendages signal some sort of messages. Certainly, they share the notion that what was once new is no longer useful. Related to this is the concept that what was once considered modern is now old fashioned. Outcome, on the wall opposite this quartet, is like a three-dimensional road map of Sacks’s career. Gadgets and tools abound. Square shaped images echo the birch boards across which they are scattered. The surfaces of these works are relief-like and more sculptural than the other art in the show. They practically call out and say, “Touch me.”

I’m particularly partial to Wake and Fuse, the blue and green ones in the rear gallery. Lit by a skylight, Wake beckons you from a great distance. It’s visible as soon as you enter Sperone Westwater. Their hues and frontal planes allude to the ecological urgencies of the moment. Even though this pair of paintings are nonrepresentational, I pictured the greens and the bumps and hollows of Fuse as dense jungle growth. Similarly, the blues and waves of built-up paint on Fuse called to mind streams and swells of water. Both related to the text-derived paintings Sacks exhibited years ago.

No Harvest I and Retrieval were installed on the second floor balcony of the gallery. No Harvest I contributed a bit of levity to the show. Its form suggests a running figure. However, it’s missing a block in its center. Should we assume this character is missing his heart? Nearby, Retrieval is packed with creative energy. Instead of finding discarded substances, we notice faces, eyes, and hands embedded in the picture plane are regarding us. These are men and women from the past in politics and the arts that Sacks, a former poetry professor at Harvard, admires. Among the lauded are Steve Biko, the South African activist; Russian poet Osip Mandelstam and his wife Nadezhda who made sure her spouse’s verses would survive the Stalinist period; and Primo Levi, the Italian writer and Holocaust survivor. Besides being haunting, they remind us of profiles in courage.

Like much else in Sacks’s show, Retrieval asks us to reflect on the past as we hurtle towards the future from our muddled present moment. This is art that encourages us to be the best that we can be.