SANTA FE, NEW MEXICO – Eight Modern celebrates its grand opening with the inaugural exhibit, Modern Dimensions: Contemporary American Sculpture. The exhibition brings together works by seven American sculptors: Walter Dusenbery, Ming Fay, Robert Lobe, Robert Mangold, Celeste Roberge, John Ruppert, and Nancy Youdelman. Each of these highly-acclaimed artists explores diverse facets of contemporary sculpture and integrates conceptual and aesthetic ideas in bold, new terms.
In developing Modern Dimensions: Contemporary American Sculpture for its grand opening, Eight Modern declares its confidence in establishing a unique venue imbued with history yet situated on the leading-edge. Analogously, the exhibit signifies the gallery’s commitment to premiering works by internationally acclaimed artists who have never before been represented in Santa Fe.
Walter Dusenbery’s sculptures are at once classically-inspired and wholly innovative. An assistant to Isamu Noguchi in the early 1970s, his works in stone apply classical ideals to organic forms and complement imposing grandeur with a sensuousness born of technical mastery. Dusenbery’s sculptures are held in several of the world’s most impressive collections including the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York.
Ming Fay’s elaborate multi-media sculptures are derived from organic sources, such as seed pods, vegetables, weeds, and other biomorphic forms. His work references the complex issues of Chinese folklore, botany, and contemporary urbanity. In addition to having received numerous awards for public works commissioned by organizations such as MTA Arts for Transit, Fay has held acclaimed solo-exhibitions in the world’s leading arts venues including MOCA Shanghai and the Whitney Museum, New York.
Robert Lobe sculpts sheets of aluminum to the spatial outlines of landscape configurations using a repoussé technique. His sculptures are not only haunting spectral images of nature abstracted, they represent an extreme re-contextualization of mechanical materials – stretching the parameters of industrial forms and methodologies. Lobe’s sculpture attained national recognition when it was prominently featured in the Whitney Museum’s famed exhibit, “Anti-Illusion.” His work is included in the collections of such noteworthy institutions as the National Gallery, Washington, D.C, and the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York.
Robert Mangold’s primary artistic concern is the relationship of time and space as expressed through movement in sculpture. His series, PTTSAAES (Point Traveling through Space at an Erratic Speed), explores implied motion. In his daring works, ‘Point’ and ‘Space,’ respectively, are defined as the roving focus of the viewer’s gaze and the time in which one’s visual attention is transferred between segments of his geometric compositions. Exhibiting internationally since the early 1960s, he has won numerous awards including the Henry Moore Grand Prize from the Hakone Open-Air Museum, Tokyo.
Celeste Roberge investigates the intersection of geological and human forms. Melding the forms of river rocks, 19th century furnishings, and stainless steel, she focuses the viewer’s experience on the visceral impact of collided opposites: the fabricated pressed between the organic, the inviting caught in the threatening, and the ephemeral embedded within the enduring. Prompting her viewers both to abstract time and to sense its immediacy, Roberge’s work engages not only the concepts of pure archaeology but also the continual excavation of desires that the chaise lounge, the iconic fixture of the psychiatrist’s office, evokes. She is the recipient of the prestigious Pollock/Krasner Foundation Grant.
John Ruppert’s sculptures address the dynamics of change. Translating vegetal forms into industrial materials, he both asserts and defies the inevitability of natural phenomena, and invests his subject matter with abstract qualities by stripping them of their original colors, details, and textures. His series of airy chain-link vessels evoke constructed boundaries, yet their delicate forms integrate fully into their surrounding environments. Exhibited and collected internationally, reviews of his work have been published in Art in America, Sculpture, and the New Art Examiner.
Nancy Youdelman centers on the relationships between objects and memory, eliciting feelings of adoration, nostalgia, and lost hope. Her mixed-media assemblages integrate personal artifacts and natural materials with girl’s and women’s clothing. Exalting and concentrating memory, her works recast as sublime the forgotten objects of quotidian experience. A leading authority and practitioner in the field of Feminist Art who has studied extensively with Judy Chicago, she is the recipient of numerous awards including recent grants from both the Pollock/Krasner and the Adolph and Esther Gottlieb Foundations.
Modern Dimensions: Contemporary American Sculpture will run from Friday, May 4, through the summer. Eight Modern is open daily from 9:30am to 6:00pm at 231 Delgado Street, Santa Fe, New Mexico 87501. For further information and image requests, contact Alex Ross via email at alex@eightmodern.net or by phone at (505) 995-0231.