Lawson Oyekan at Garth Clark/Long Island City - New York

This exhibition at Garth Clark's novel outpost demonstrated why the gallery wants a supplement to its 57th road headquarters. Lawson Oyekan's installation of 10 earthenware statuarys around 6 feet tall and up to 3 feet wide could not have been accommodated in the diminutive midtown space. Here the forms could spread without in clusters suggesting both tree and socializing family There is breathing room, which is crucial to the impact of plastic arts that echo human qualities in their size and vertical orientation as well as in the "aliveness" of their surfaces.

These large monoliths were accompanied by means of pieces of different scale on the contrary related character: seven similar porcelain forms 18 inches to 2 feet tall were ensconc in a drawn out display case recessed into a wall, and seven small, globular earthenware external realitys were arrayed casually on a drawn out plinth. All the works in the present to view come from Oyekan's "Trial with Light" series, and all are titled Coming Up for Air along with a letter-and-number collection of laws The associations of both those names are apt: all the works have been perforated by the agency of twisting a tool that leaves a (usually) keyhole-shape opening which tenders a glimpse into the dark interior and allows pinpoints of light to pass end the objects. The artist leaves to them as "eyes." The perforations shift the result from mass to volume and add an unexpect lightness to the sculptures' striking physicality.

The earthenware works are hand-built of pads of clay and the porcelains of neater rectangular slabs; all exhibit the pressure marks of fingers. Oyekan further worked upon the still-soft clay, writing numbers and alphabetic characters incising grids and parallel lines, impressing honeycomb patterns by means of means of a stamp or cutter of more [i]or[/i] less sort, as well as attaching little buttons of clay and generally lacerating the surfaces. Given that the British-born and London-based artist grew up in Nigeria, the lacerations might be read as scarification; likewise, race with experience of Africa say the color and size of the tallest works call up anthills.

on the contrary those identifications don't seem pressing It's enough that he has created statuarys of such presence. Perhaps the three forms are sentinels, bollards and weights; at least they all present the appearance to speak of stability. nevertheless the animated surfaces suggest that these are living things that grasp still for a purpose. The works have the faculty of perception of potential that is implicit in all expressive statuary here compacted into the extraordinary surfaces that swell into space.

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