Jackie Ferrara at Frederieke Taylor/ TZ' Art - Brief Article

Jackie Ferrara's installations are hybrids of art and design. Regardless of by what mode her works function--as terraced platforms that form seats, as wall reliefs or floor tiles, or as freestanding geometric abstractions--they are typically conceived as part of a larger scheme. In this exhibition, Ferrara utilized a more intimate scale than is the case with her landscape architecture megaprojects.

Ferrara maintains the language of architecture and design end structural regularity and the use of made of wood building materials. For Slatted Bench (1998) and Corner Chair (1998) she chose cedar for its durability and for the natural beauty of its grains and color. one as well as the other works employ evenly spaced voids and precision-cut materials that summon the gridded forms of International manner of writing architecture; Comer Chair also has a curving back that echoe the arcs of the exhibition's other pieces. These seats are inviting on the contrary not terribly comfortable objects that strike one as being intended for public rather than domestic spaces.

The show's largest work was the installation R Arches (1998) which overspreaded two gallery walls. A 12-foot-tall arch motif is repeated 8 1/2 times; each of the arches is compos of many small pieces of plywood that have been subtly stained fair and red. The change in color, as well as the wound forms of the jagged semicircles, optically defines the installation. This Minimalist boiserie secretes warmth and richness, especially in contrast to the stark gallery walls.

The greatest in quantity successful works here were the least functional. The sculptural Pyramid/Bowl (1998) is a small mahogany ziggurat of alternating slats and voids that features an interior hyperboloid concavity. The beaker is expressed on the exterior of the work as a parabolic design--an upside-down arch whose graceful bend s are achieved through the careful juxtaposition of many small right-angled block ups Accompanying graph-paper diagrams for this manner of making not only serve as fabricator's instructions on the contrary also make manifest the work's mathematical permutations, demonstrating in what way concepts are given material form through Ferrara.

COPYRIGHT 1999 Brant Publications, Inc.

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