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Artweek - Feb 10, 1973

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BARBARA CHASE-RIBOUD: "CONFESSIONS FOR MYSELF," 1972, black bronze and black wool, 120"x40"x12", collection, University Art Museum, Berkeley.

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BARBARA CHASE-RIBOUD: "ZANZIBAR III," polished bronze and silk rope, 12 3/4"x13 1/2"x13 1/2". private collection.

Barbara Chase-Ribaud is an American sculptor, jeweler and draftsman who has lived in Paris for the past ten years. In her work she unites art and craft techniques, combining metals and fibers, opposing hard and soft. A group of charcoal drawings is also included in her exhibit at the University Art Museum.

SCULPTURE AS BEAUTY
Lynn Lester Hershman

Berkeley
Tenuous strength, antithetical contrasts and poetic rendering of a primary vision consolidate in the work of Barbara Chase-Ribaud, whose exhibition is at the University Art Museum, Berkeley. The essential approach of these sculptures revolves around the pushing of materials into unexpected contexts, thereby revealing various paradoxes about their more obvious natures. By accomplishing this with the two dissimilar materials she uses – metal and fiber – Chase-Ribaud achieves analogies to the very nature of being.

In these sculptures there are obvious polarizations present and at the same time, a depth of subtle insinuations. Hard metals crumple and fold to become soft. Silk is corded and tangled to create an illusion of stability. Heavy becomes light. Hard becomes soft. Negative becomes positive. Linear aspects underline torn mass. In the sense that metal refers to male forms and the fiber to female, male and female relationships become ambiguous. Force and constraint merge as primitive imagery becomes sophisticated.

"Confessions to Myself," a black, bronze and wool piece, was recently purchased by the University Art Museum. This work exemplifies Chase-Ribaud's blending of properties. The strong, rigid metal is made to appear soft and rubbery. Crushed, it seems to float with weightless effort above a rigid skirt of wool. The linear tendrils of the fiber are knotted, braided and corded in such a way as to effect a rather religious, spiritual image, somewhat like rosaries hanging from a nun's garment. Chase-Ribaud thinks of the metal sections as masks and the cordings as skirts. She says, in fact, that in these works she seeks to dissociate the mask from the ground and its surroundings so that it is no longer simply a piece of sculpture but a personage, an object of ritual and magic.

"Bathers," a horizontal piece of cast aluminum squares placed on the floor, becomes silvery waves

SCULPTURE AS BEAUTY
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through which silvery synthetic fibers, dull in contrast to the shiny metal, press through crevices almost as it they attempted to gain freedom. Perhaps in this piece it is the ocean top seen from beneath, with various squid-like forms undulating to the rhythmic currents. Poetically and sensitively it is also a visual rendering of life and death.

In some works, particularly "Zanzibar" and "Albino," the force of a primitive African sensibility is evoked. There is a mysterious meshing of displaced essences. By taking the primitive qualities away from their natural context and making them into monuments seen in a museum environment the innate qualities are transmuted, causing a sense of mystery and power. The artist extracts essences and displaces them, like a tulip in a field of clover. The meshing causes an effect of starkness.

The wall pieces in the exhibit cling in a tense balance that prevents their flattening or falling. Hidden armatures in the standing pieces eliminate the need for a base, helping the forms to blend with their environment.

Chase-Ribaud's drawings differ from those of most sculptors in that they are not diagrams or schematic renderings of future pieces, but rather finished, sensitive explorations or "writings" that exist as completed works. They do, however, embody the qualities of the sculpture in that they too contrast opposites in an imagery that joins crushed mass and solid line. And in that they are beautifully executed.

The fine balance of poetry and craftsmanship manifest themselves as a beautiful presence. In the catalogue to the exhibit, Barbara Chase-Ribaud states her intentions: "Sculpture as a created object in space should enrich not reflect and be beautiful. Beauty is its function." Chase-Ribaud has met her intentions as to the function of her sculpture, but she has also gone beyond the superficialities and revealed, as Keats once said, that truth is beauty.