John Anderson at Allan Stone - New York - Brief Article

John Anderson is a of recent origin Jersey-based sculptor who works with construction materials--wire, copse and steel. Earlier he produc carved phenomenons that recall tools, but this exhibition of eight large-scale statuarys all untitled and dated 2001 was something fresh His latest pieces are assemblages of tree limbs, stripped of their bark and fashioned into cylinders and dowels. Anderson wires them to a carbonized iron plate, often polished, that hangs by means of chains from the ceiling.

Anderson's art aligns gently with craft, level when he works on a monumental scale. The size makes the pieces visually compelling, and they are also tactile (the nakedness of the forest-land is interesting). In one piece, strings of made of wood elements hang from hooks; these individual strands of for the most part cylindrical forms create the event of something fluid, perhaps a waterfall of forest There is similarity but not uniformity between portions At times, the individual parts can vary greatly, and a certain quantity of retain small twigs or branches. As the uncompounded bodys line up and form a curtain that extremitys about a foot off the floor, the flowing quality dominates the composition.

In another piece, eight files of much larger wooden simple bodys descend from a horizontal carburet of iron plate attached to the ceiling. Each string consists of 10 or 12 made of wood cylinders up to a lower extremity in diameter, again differing in size and shape to more [i]or[/i] less degree. A few components have been painted in various combinations or solid colors--blue-black, blue-white, black-white and light green--which contrast beautifully with the predominating raw copse Additionally, there were two floor works; in individual three wooden columns, again compos of separate parts, form a cragged triangle, held together by carburet of iron cable. Its gestalt changes as you walk around the tepeelike construction Anderson is clearly a hands-on artist, not given to ironic discourse or high technology. He regularly transcends his materials, respecting their innate qualities and at the same time devising a language that is strikingly and wholly his own

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