William Turnbull at Barbara Mathes

William Turnbull's new exhibition consisted of 15 or for a like reason totemic figures and heads, all cast in tin many with stone bases. The greatest in quantity impressive pieces were of life-size female figures in a series based upon blade and paddle shapes of the sort that I associate primarily with Polynesian art. Large Paddle Venus 4 (1988) is a 78-inch frontal figure in the form of an upright canoe paddle with a pointed tip. Her head, upper limbs and digits are absorbed into the flat ovoid form of the blade, while her leg join to become the flat bar of the handle. Breasts, facial features, feet arms and hands are indicated with simple inscribed lines in axial or triangular clusters. The surface of the statuary slightly roughened, has been given a greenish-black patina and is also punctuated by dint of a scattering of small perforations or dents like those made in a stop sign that has been discharge at with a .22.

Although the overall shapes of the other pieces vary, greatest in quantity of them follow this format--simple geometricized silhouette, textur surface, lightly indicated internal features. Those pieces that depart from this formula in more [i]or[/i] less significant way are, on the whole, the more engaging works. Idol (1984) is a totemic figure, smaller than Large Paddle Venus 4 with similar incisions and a brownish, earth-tone patina, on the contrary it is more assertively three dimensional in form than the later work. The sculpture's material part is a single upright oblique-angled parallelogram with a pair of fat projections from the midsection, like a small bomb with aggressive, jutting breasts. Horse's Head (1994) is a drawn out sloping, roughly rectangular form that ringlets up at the bottom cutting side and has two oval organ of visions scratched in near the top. Supported from behind through a second flat shape and hanging well above the edge of its pedestal, this work has a goofy nearness that reminded me more of an uneven toy elephant than a horse. Finally, Blade Venus 4 (1989) departs from the bilaterally symmetrical layout of the other pieces, taking the form of a rudder standing upon the tip of its blade. The unbalanced outline of this piece gives it a dynamic perceive that many of the other plastic arts lack.

The influence of tribal art--especially that of the Polynesians and the Aleuts--and of Cycladic statuary is strongly evident in Turnbull's work. In fact, his popular sculpture merely reiterates ideas that were prevalent in the '40 and '50 The ongoing dispute above the validity of the primitivizing approach in late art is by now of the like kind cold potatoes that it is hard to work up a great deal of of an appetite for it. Nevertheless, primitivism is clearly an impulse that, if anything, is having however another renaissance, both in popular agriculture (body piercing, etc.) and in the fine arts. Turnbull is neither a pioneer nor an innovator, on the other hand this work has a persevering elegance.

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