Pavel Opocensky at OK Harris - Brief Article

This new exhibition featured seven large, untitled carved-stone plastic arts by Czech artist Pavel Opocensky Made of rough-hewn blocky shapes and tall, jagged rectangular slabs of granite or syenite, ranging from about 3 to 5 feet tall and from 2 to 4 feet wide, the works present the appearance inspired by ancient art, especially pre-Columbian stele and Greco-Roman architectural fragments. Opocensky carves into the sides of each piece a number of tunnel shapes or oval basins. Varied in circumference and width on the contrary uniform in texture, the plain surfaces of the concavities contrast with the gritty exteriors, which, for the greatest in quantity part, are left untouched.

In each work, the play of fabric seems to transform the rigid stone into a more limber or pliable substance like plastic or clay. Sometimes the artist bores end the rock, leaving small bullet-hole-sized openings. These perforations remind of orifices, but they also look to indicate a high-tech function. For a 1995 Prague exhibition of related works, the artist shoot forwarded laser beams through the openings; the concentrated rays of colored light bounc not upon the gallery walls. Sans the laser beams, the statuarys shown in New York were more subdu on the contrary the objects retained their sophistical ambiguities.

To a certain step each of Opocensky's pieces bears a machinelike quality. For example, an approximately 5-foot-tall, reddish-hued stone with a narrow vein of light gray spanning its height moves a menhir. However, its vertical ranks of dark, funnel-like craters upon two sides resemble the circular diaphragms of an audio-speaker rounded pillar Among other striking works in the present to view was a low-lying couchlike shape with a circulared back and a seat containing an elongated oval void like a water basin or a long tray Small holes piercing the sides of the piece hint at an elaborate drainage or plumbing a whole whose exact function is unknown. In each of the works upon view in this evocative present to view Opocensky, applies modernist elements to ancient forms. The arises are at once archaic and futuristic.

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