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Page 16

Artweek

Mary Corse, Loren Madsen 

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or maybe my visual stance is poisoned in regard to anything that even smacks of "Hollywoodness." 

The contrast between Corse and Madsen, well-calculated and advantageous to both, plays Corse's simplicity against Madsen's tension systems, Corse's blatantly synthetic colors against Madsen's natural materials and Corse's strong gestalt against Madsen's functional intricacies. and steel rod piece he calls a "killer." Fifteen rows of bricks (10 bricks per row) extend from the wall into the room precariously balanced on metal rods, one per brick. Madsen's illogicalness and audacity is entertaining: is it a trick, is he really defying gravity? Actually, in the past gravity has been the victor as Madsen's sensitive line drawings on another wall indicate. The depict the same piece intact and in a pile of rubble. 

The excitement and trauma a painter feels as a work nears completion - will it work or won't it? did I pull it off? etc. - is, in most cases, an intellectual triumph or defeat. Some sculptors are confronted with a more crucial criterion - will the damn thing fall down? Because Madsen's sculpture employs tension as the only force for joining parts, he walks the fine line between success and obvious, embarrassing failure. 

I watched him add the last few bricks to the piece as the whole sculpture buckled and bounced with each touch, having already exerted a great deal of force against the support wall that museum workmen had just finished reinforcing. It made me realize that the thrilling quality of Madsen's work is in its concern with falling as much as stability, just as Chris Burden's pieces are about death and pain, not merely the defying of them. 

Madsen is playing one-upmanship, historically speaking, and tests himself publicly as athletes do. At first he equated the falling of a piece with failure. Now, although it is still a frustration, he acknowledges that aspect as an integral part of the work. 

Both artists succeed in adding energy and fun to the museum's tired contemporary gallery. I am looking forward to part two of L.A. 6: Summer'74.

[[center margin]] Art Week 27. '74 San Francisco, Cal. [[/center margin]]

Windows of and Onto the World

Campbell

Robert Reid's paintings create a quiet and subdued atmosphere at ADI South. Reid's large oils in thinly applied tones of tans, grays and blues have only occasional spots of bright colors. His beach scenes are all based on a simple large foreground with a thin horizon line. Land and sky spaces are worked in shapes which merge together to create softly textured patterns. Each painting contains a window which usually continues in a downward vertical of crosshatched pencil lines. 

Reid's major focus is within and closely around the windows, where letters and numbers recline in almost humanlike positions. The parallel is not accidental or contrived. Reid has always rendered people as letters or numbers, resulting in a sense of aloofness and at times loneliness. Reid's use of subdued colors and his attention to great fields of space reinforce this feeling. 

Reid's small watercolors convey the same sense of space and quiet energy contained in his oils. Small irregular shapes are combined in soft watery tones, and the whole floats in a sea of white paper. The designs, too, are similar, but each separate space in the watercolors is not as clear cut as the sections of his canvases. Reid's works have a sense of mystery and an easygoing, tranquil mood which do not cause strong viewer involvement. His canvases and watercolors will be on view at ADI South through July 29. (RL)



A Fiber Explosion 

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beloved land. A written statement by Trude Guermonprez gives weight to this interpretation. She mentions that "...more and more an awareness of our ties with the universe seems to occupy my feelings and I sense a quieting of passions in our personal lives which gives strength and freedom from anxieties...

"I used the stencil in various ways and let the weaving strengthen the symbolism of the ideas, adding graphic values as they came out of the interlacing structure and the color and body of fibers...Then I used...the profiles of John and myself in the same way. These weavings seem to say even more of all that concerns us."

Another new manner of dealing with woven fabrics is introduced in this exhibit. A lightweight, flat cloth stenciled with freely interpreted trees has been cut into strips which she weaves into a web of pale, monofilament images by offsetting the strips. The airy, almost transparent panels are secured with sheets of clear acrylic so that they gain physical strength and durability without losing their look of utter fragility and delicacy. Trude Guermonprez continues to add new dimensions to the weaver's art. 

There is massive, more sculptural use of fiber in the group exhibits mounted at the Transamerica Building and in the Place/Allrich Galleries. 

On three sides of the Transamerica Pyramid a web of heavy netting by Jules and Kaethe Kliot and Jenifer Kaufman reaches up the outside of the building, creating shapes that repeat the architectural forms at the same time that they extend it and translate it into the flexibility of sisal rope. The rope strands anchor at the sidewalk, making an intricate series of contained and released spaces that pedestrians move through - the most effective way of seeing and experiencing this huge web. Anonymous other weavers have added small color areas to the basic structure, working them into openings in the net. In most cases these are inconsequential, not up to the impressiveness of the big weaving, and a little distracting. However the weaving is to be in place through August 16, and further additions may be an improvement. 

Inside the foyer the exhibit, which, like the outdoor weaving, was arranged by the ADI Gallery, shows hangings and space structures by almost 20 very good fiber artists, including the Kliots and Jenifer Kaufman. Predominantly the pieces displayed are carried out in variations of bobbin lace techniques using heavy fibers - often sisal - producing an effect quite different from the daintiness traditionally associated with the word "lace." One particularly handsome large panel is by Lydia Vangelder, who has actively influenced the resurgent interest in bobbin lace. One section of the exhibit, a small display of ancient woven fragments and a few contemporary pieces of lace, made with traditional fine white threads, emphasizes the changes that have taken place in the thinking of fiber artists. 

At the Place/Allrich Galleries the weaving structures tend to be more densely three-dimensional, showing audacious changes in surface texture from flat, relatively smooth areas to heavy tufting and elements that move out into the surrounding space to dangle and hang or curve out and back as extensions of the flatter areas. Ann Lanborn's Birds is an all white panel that joins layers of sparkling white chicken feathers and curving white ostrich plumes to the subtler whites of wool and other fibers. Fran Martin's Prince of Big Red hangs like a huge curly beard of sisal dyed in deep violet and red-violet. Robert Gutman's big Ra is like a huge bearded mask of jute and other fibers, with feather-tipped strands hanging down around its edges and a fluff of soft fur in its central area.

Candace Crockett shows hangings that are a marked departure from much of her more familiar card weaving work, although she still uses card weaving as an important element in one piece. This one is untitled, and the card woven section serves as a long richly colored vertical stripe down the center of a mass of heavy, unspun wool tufts. This wool looks like fur, but has a seductive softness. Another of Crockett's panels, titled Cloud, uses a different type of unspun fleece to make a hanging form below more flatly woven surfaces. 

Tactility is an important aspect of all of the pieces that Place/Allrich will be showing through July. In these structures, the pleasure of touching is as great as the pleasure of looking. For the artists who produced them, handling their materials must have been a major source of satisfaction.

Native Funk and Flash, an exhibit of contemporary American folk arts at the Stef Gallery, Inverness, draws its title and much of its constants from the new Scrimshaw Press book of the same name by craftswoman Alexandra Jacopetti and photographer Jerry Wainwright. The display reveals the remarkable concentration of creative energy which exists in Marin.charming toys, fanciful jewelry and organic, wooden chairs can be ordered from the artists.  The most memorable piece, however, are the one-of-a-kind objects, especially those made of fabrics which were created over long periods of time and seem destined to become heirlooms. A rich and personal quilt owned by China Kelly was made for a little girl by her family friends. Another piece, a blouse, heavy with embroidery, was stitched to mark the time while the artist spent two years in an Italian jail for possession of marijuana [she says she will never make another one]. Exquisite dresses and a pale, romantic, painted and quilted iris-strewn jacket are designed to make the wearer feel gorgeous.

After closing at the end of August, the exhibit will travel to Mills College, Oakland. 

(AF)









[[image]] 9 New Masters 1974 M.A. Candidates at C.S.U.S.F. Tues., Jul. 30 - Fri., Aug. 23 Marquoit Galleries 40 Gold Street San Francisco, CA 94133 (415) 391-1225 Tues.-Sat. 10A.M.-5P.M. 

[[image]] Kaethe Kliot: Detail of bobbin lace, at the Transamerica Pyramid, San Francisco.

[[image]] Candace Crockett: White Cloud, handwoven hanging, at the Place-Allrich Galleries, San Francisco. Photo: John F. Marriott.

[[image]]Alexandra Jacopetti: Phoenix, embroidery, at the Lester Gallery, Inverness.