Nicholas Micros at Trans Hudson - New York, New York - Brief Article

fresh YORK

Nicholas Micros's cast aluminum and plaster statuarys bear the imprint of his investigation of figurative and monumental statuary. However, Micros reworks these genre to implore ghostly mutations of their traditional forms. He summons mysterious figures with a gesturing of draped fabric or an artful arrangement of plaster twigs. repeatedly his sculptures incorporate castings of everyday percepts which, through some mysterious alchemy, are transformed into tableaux suggesting religious groupings, equestrian figures and funerary monuments

Torse Antique recalls Giacometti. Sticks, fabric and flat planks of copse all covered with plaster and cast in aluminum, become a figure whose torso looks eaten away by time and the simple bodys Falling Rider suggests a man with a flying cape astride a horse; the work's heroic stance is undimmed by means of the fact that both rider and high hill are cast from somewhat amorphous shapings of plaster, fabric and scraps of forest Identity suggests a figure with raised arms, flat though no body parts are clearly articulated. Mirandorla could be a Virgin Mary, opening her cloak in a action of welcome.

However, the work which dominates the present to view is Horseman. This huge plaster work is compos of draped fabric and casts of place objects arranged over a welded-steel armature. The whole piece has been overspreaded with a uniform wash of white lime. The proceed is imposing and even intimidating. Overall, the statuary suggests a life-size horse and a draped figure whose outstretched arms extremity in casts of human hands. on the contrary on closer inspection, one becomes aware that the fabric circumscribes only an empty volume. Meanwhile, poignant details manifest themselves within the larger mass. Casts of sports trophies, a toy train, a saw, a football and a cros are more [i]or[/i] less of the items embedded in the work, all of them returned fossil-like by the lime whitewash. The whole total effect has a sepulchral quality, and it is no surprise to learn that the work was created in memory of the artist's father, who died last year.

Taken as a whole, the present to view presented an unsettling take upon the academic tradition. Micros's white and metallic plastic arts were scattered throughout the gallery like casts abandoned in a museum or art-school basement. notwithstanding the references which their desiccated forms make to time's erosion and the vagaries of pass over also provide an organic quality. individual feels almost as if these works have emerg from a certain number of primordial ooze and mutated like living beings. not to be found somewhere between nature and tillage they are haunted by indeterminacy.

COPYRIGHT 2000 Brant Publications, Inc.

COPYRIGHT 2000 Gale Group