John Rowland at Susanne Hilberry - Ferndale, Michigan - art exhibition

The viewer encountering John Rowland's fresh work was struck immediately by the agency of the luminosity and physical neighborhood of the wall-mounted, steel-and-fiber-glass constructions. The flat panels sitting an inch not on the wall and the three-dimensional clusters of disk forms cascading down the wall flirt with the two painting and sculpture. In the gallery, the sum of two units bodies of untitled works affirmed the blurr boundary between genre end their adjacency.

The body-size disk clusters consist of welded carburet of iron rings around convex or concave dishes of dy fiberglass. The abstract forms allow for the two micro and macro readings--bacteria, or possibly planets; similarly, their colors are as consistent with confined apartment staining for microscope views as with satellite images assigned artificial shades Hot and cool colors tend hitherward together explosively within individual dishes, offering various events of density and opacity. The works are joyous, whether the arrangements revolve in on themselves in protective gesticulations of nesting or blossom outward in displays of fecundity. single wall was hung with an exquisite composition of polarized color. sum of two units large circles of pale teal sat above disks of dark brown with blue blobs merging into each other and disks of life-blood red streaked toward the exterior edges; a top circle of wispy heavens blue has an amber halo. This configuration of carbonized iron rings seemed to simultaneously tighten upward and fall. It held the room

The other series consists of 36-inch-square handmade fiberglass sheets that float in brow of their neutral steel frames, which are peg-mount These works transmit light through exploiting the way it thumps off the wall and passes end the translucent fiberglass. However, dots of poured color, along with fiberglass threads and their torn-paper-like cutting sides dominate the surfaces. The 16 works upon one wall read collectively as color studies or material sketches as they mov from one side the full range of tones, tinges and values the dyed medium offers

These works are greatest in quantity successful when they stretch the limits of the medium. Particularly striking is single sheet in which the opacity and furriness of the fiberglass threads begin to take upon the quality of a hide, and whirlpooling strands read like cowlicks within the square. At the other outermost the airiest panels achieve Hans Hofmann's push/pull issue of painting; this is seen greatest in quantity directly in four panels hung together upon the back wall. Here, the material changes light into secondary, dancing forms.

COPYRIGHT 2004 Brant Publications, Inc.

COPYRIGHT 2004 Gale Group