John McCracken
16 September - 23 October 2010
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| © John McCracken
Installation view |
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JOHN McCRACKEN
New Works in Bronze and Steel
September 16 – October 23, 2010
Opening reception: Thursday, September 16, 6 – 8 PM
My works are minimal and reductive, but also maximal. I try to make them
concise, clear statements in three-dimensional form, and also to take
them to a breathtaking level of beauty.
– John McCracken
David Zwirner is pleased to present an exhibition of new work by
American artist John McCracken, on view at the gallery’s 533 West 19th
Street space.
McCracken developed his earliest sculptural work while studying painting
at the California College of Arts and Crafts in Oakland in the 1960s.
While experimenting with increasingly three-dimensional canvases, the
artist began to produce objects made with industrial techniques and
materials, including plywood, sprayed lacquer, and pigmented resin,
creating the highly-reflective, smooth surfaces that he has become known
for.
In 1966, McCracken generated his signature sculptural form: the plank, a
narrow, monochromatic, rectangular board format that leans at an angle
against the wall (the site of painting) while simultaneously entering
into the three-dimensional realm and physical space of the viewer. In
addition to the planks, the artist also creates wall pieces and
free-standing sculptures in varying geometrical shapes and sizes,
ranging from smaller forms on pedestals to large-scale, outdoor
structures.
This exhibition consists of three bronze planks, representing the first
time McCracken has used the metal for this format, and four square
columns in stainless steel. In the artist’s words, these reflective
works are both "materialist and transcendentalist;” they are luminous
objects which border on invisibility as they reflect their surroundings.
There is a subtle interplay between their shiny materiality and their
immaterial dimension, and by extension between their physicality and
meta-physicality: the objects gain a singular and almost otherworldly
quality, appearing at once present and concealed.
The artist’s use of color and reflection further underscores this
intended dichotomy. Though inherently abstract, these devices are used
as "materials,” or structural elements in their own right. Titles,
likewise, subtly complement the concrete, solid works by referring to
intangible or ephemeral phenomena.
The four stainless steel sculptures in this exhibition, Star, Infinite,
Dimension, and Electron, all from 2010, are polished to produce such a
high degree of reflectivity that they simultaneously activate their
surroundings and seem translucent and camouflaged. They offer little
indication of the intrinsic density of their material, but in line with
Minimalist concerns, they contextualize their surroundings and reference
and include the viewer. McCracken usually creates these columns for
outdoor installation: able to withstand extreme environmental
conditions, they will alter their appearance from hour to hour depending
on the weather and the time of the day.
Made from bronze, the planks included in the exhibition represent a
departure from McCracken’s previous, colorful fiberglass and resin works
in this format. The tinted appearance of this classic medium subtly
alters the appearance of the objects it reflects, and lends these
slanted, sharply geometric works an elegant, solemn dimension. Leaning
against the wall, the planks negotiate the difference between painting
and sculpture, and thereby address another primary concern of
Minimalism: the desire to break away from medium specificity and reject
the two-dimensionality of the picture plane by "releasing” line and form
into real space. As the artist notes, "I see the plank as existing
between two worlds, the floor representing the physical world of
standing objects, trees, cars, buildings, [and] human bodies, … and the
wall representing the world of the imagination, illusionist painting
space, [and] human mental space.”1
McCracken’s seductive, light-emanating surfaces nonetheless occupy a
unique position within the context of Minimal art. His planks and
geometric sculptures are receptive, approachable, almost playful
structures that "respond” to their surroundings and the viewer. As the
artist notes in one of his many detailed sketch books, "if the viewer is
in motion, the sculptures become in a sense kinetic, changing more
radically than one might expect. At times, certain sculptures seem to
almost disappear and become illusions, so rather than describing these
things are objects, it might be better to describe them as complexes of
energies.”2
John McCracken was born in 1934 in Berkeley, California and lives and
works in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Since the 1960s, he has exhibited
steadily in the United States and abroad, and his early work was
included in ground-breaking exhibitions such as Primary Structures at
the Jewish Museum, New York, 1966, and American Sculpture of the Sixties
at the Los Angeles County Museum, 1967. More recently, the artist was
the subject of solo exhibitions at the Inverleith House at the Royal
Botanic Garden in Edinburgh, Scotland, 2009, and the Stedelijk Museum
voor Actuele Kunst (S.M.A.K.) in Ghent, Belgium, 2004. His work has been
prominently featured in recent major group shows including Time &
Place: Los Angeles 1957-1968, Moderna Museet, Stockholm, 2008; documenta
12, Kassel, Germany, 2007; The Los Angeles Art Scene, 1955-1985, Centre
Georges Pompidou, Paris, 2006; and A Minimal Future? Art as Object
1958-1968, The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, 2004. From
November 2010 to March 2011, a major museum retrospective of the
artist’s work will be hosted by the Castello di Rivoli, Turin.
1 John McCracken, cited in Thomas Kellein, "Interview with John
McCracken. August 1995,” in McCracken. Exh. cat. (Basel: Kunsthalle
Basel, 1995), pp. 21-39, p. 32.
2 John McCracken, sketch book entry from July 1966, published in John
McCracken Sketch Book (Santa Fe: Radius Books, 2008), p. 77.
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