Josiah McElheny, "Early Modernism Mirrored and Reflected Infinitely" (2004). Private collection, New York. © Josiah McElheny. Photo: Paul Mutino.
The very ambitious Innovations in the Third Dimension: Sculpture of Our Time is up now at the Bruce Museum in Greenwich, Connecticut. Spanning the bronze age of Auguste Rodin to the tech-driven mixed-media of Robert Whitman, Innovations attempts to illustrate how “virtually every time-honored idea about sculpture has been challenged in the 20th and 21st centuries.” Of course where would art be if it were not aligned with progress?
Drawn from local collections, the exhibit includes forty-five works that aim to chart the successive radical changes in size, media, presentation, and techniques that have kept sculpture on the cutting edge path. From traditional statuary to sticky chewing gum, from figuration to figuring out what is what, Innovations makes its case with three centuries worth of big-leaguers, like Alexander Calder, John Chamberlain, Henry Moore, Louise Nevelson, Niki de Saint-Phalle, and Art21’s Louise Bourgeois, Josiah McElheny, and Do-Ho Suh.
Innovations in the Third Dimension: Sculpture of Our Time runs through May 24, 2009.
