IS TED LARSEN THE LOVE CHILD OF CONSTRUCTIVISM AND MAX ERNST?
THE Magazine, 08/23/2013
IS TED LARSEN THE LOVE CHILD OF CONSTRUCTIVISM AND MAX ERNST?
THE Magazine, 08/23/2013
IS TED LARSEN THE LOVE CHILD OF CONSTRUCTIVISM AND MAX ERNST?
God only knows—and maybe ARTnews, where you’d find a question like this as the lead-in for a not-so-nuanced look at Some Assembly Required, Ted Larsen’s recent exhibition of
sculpture at David Richard Gallery. It’s a very strong show of spot-on assemblage sculpture whose visual whimsy and wry humor rely upon Larsen’s knack—that’s too ARTnews-y:
gift—for harnessing good design to still better invention.
The result is a series of small geometric metal-and-plywood,
polychrome wall constructions of enormous visual appeal and
seductive anecdote. The experience for the viewer is akin to
perusing the short stories of Cheever or Chekhov.
At first glance the work is not imposing, and it’s certainly
not intrusive. A typical piece is less than two feet in height,
a linear wall-mounted assemblage of welded lengths of
square-sided metal bars that run at right angles along x-y-z
axes within some imaginary three-dimensional grid. For
some pieces, the metal armature serves as support scaffold
for a single slab or for stacks of contiguous laminate plywood
rectilinear plaques—all plated with industrial-dye metal strips
whose matte, chalky enamel surfaces of green, blue, cerulean,
orange, ochre or tan suggest the polychrome remnants
of some Rubiks cube cut into strips in some waste-salvage
WALL-E world. But a closer look and a bit of reflection make
apparent the visual appeal of each piece and a strength and
subtlety that ground it. Here and There (2012) is both a visual
and figurative gateway to the show. An irregular, seven-foot
lattice of welded steel projects six feet from one gallery wall.
Its widely spaced vertical bars proclaim a boundary yet invite
passage, a kind of portal to the dozen wall pieces that bracket
and define the gallery enclosure.
On the formal level, at least, you could make a persuasive
case for the Constructivist aesthetic. Stripped of its utopian
content, the Russian early modern theory espoused three
principles in its art making: tektonika, whereby the constituent
industrial materials invest the work with meaning; konstruktsiya,
or “construction,” basically the assembling of the sculpture from
various components (at the time, a revolutionary approach vis-àvis
traditional sculpture’s carving and modeling), and faktura, or
the choice and handling of the materials. It is unlikely that Larsen
explicitly subscribes to these principles but, whatever the artist’s
approach, his sculpture does reflect their virtue of ensuring
both structural integrity in the work and visual discourse with
the viewer. Larsen’s pervasive use of polychrome salvage steel
plating adds the “found-element” factor so effectively deployed
in Duchamp and later Surrealist sculpture (with a nod to Picasso’s
seminal use of the device in his projecting Cubist wall constructs),
and applied with great effect here to establish chromatic texture
and poetic tone for each piece.
For several pieces in the show (Linear Curve, Past Prediction,
Random Pattern, Real Fantasy, and Whole Half) Larsen uses the
welded steel bars simply as support for a single wall tableau,
in the sense here of a projecting abstract panel with strongly
narrative overtones. The panel of Past Prediction floats out from
the wall like a mounted flat tv screen, a plywood high-relief
divided horizontally into two wraparound zones of patina green
and white plating and, attached to its surface, a vertical wooden
frame that optically bends forward as it extends to the upper,
green zone. In the similar tableau of Linear Curve, this play of
perspective is elaborated in the jig-saw cube formed on the
surface from polychrome triangles of salvage steel, and again in
the foreshortened illusion of Missing Present.
This allusive quality is especially evident in those
sculptures in which the support, or armature, function of the
welded steel bars is elevated to visually embody the proffered
conceit: (Loose Knot, Nearly Complete, One Choice, Personal
Space, Soaring Down). It is equally apparent in the chiastic play
between the virtually identical polychrome compositions of
Orderly Confusion and Random Pattern, either one of whose
motley Mondrian stack of enamel-plated plinths—luggage or
books of varied hue—beguiles the viewer with its Edward
Hopper palette and whispered tales of Cannery Row.
But apart from the visual wit and wordplay—or perhaps
better, at the source of it—is Larsen’s formidable command of
his medium. The wit and whimsy that pervade these sculptures
are entirely a function of Larsen’s approach to facture—shapes
and colors as visual grammar—and his underlying sense of
design’s narrative force—as visual syntax. This openness to
form and materials as visual language yields highly personal
yet engaging work (whereas the Constructivist submission to
an overriding utopian agenda often led to art as propaganda).
His Never Again—a seemingly effortless amalgam of thin
burgundy, ochre, and white plated rectangles stacked
contiguously like accordions along a horizontal axis—is as
enigmatic, random, and purposeful as a poem by William
Carlos Williams: “so much depends/upon//a red wheel/
barrow//glazed with rain/water//beside the white/chickens.”
—Richard Tobin
Download: IS TED LARSEN THE LOVE CHILD OF CONSTRUCTIVISM AND MAX ERNST?
THE Magazine, 08/23/2013
Associated Artist
Associated Exhibitions
- TED LARSEN Some Assembly Required
August 2, 2013 - September 7, 2013
MORE INFO
Associated News
-
September 30, 2014
Angular artist Ted Larsen wrestles with scene + planes + higher bar -
June 19, 2014
An Interview with Ted Larsen
Opednews.com, 06/19/2014
Hiroyuki Hamada
-
February 15, 2014
Surfaced Forms -
October 8, 2013
Ted Larsen
NMPBS
Colores, 10/08/2013
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August 23, 2013
IS TED LARSEN THE LOVE CHILD OF CONSTRUCTIVISM AND MAX ERNST?
THE Magazine, 08/23/2013