Dove Bradshaw at Sandra Gering and Linda Kirkland - New York, New York - Review of Exhibitions - Brief Article

A miniature geological drama took place late last spring with the presentation of Negative Ions I-IV (1996/98) in the main range of Sandra Gering's gallery. Four large, untrimmed stop ups of rock salt sat upon the floor; inches above each, Dove Bradshaw had suspended a dropping tunnel which slowly released water onto the salt. above the course of the exhibition, the water bored a opening through the rock, providing an elementary demonstration of the proces of erosion. The elegance of the work--the spare installation, simple mechanism, graceful blown-glass funnel--was calculatored by the artist's fundamental lack of rule over the event. For if Bradshaw put the process in motion, she steadfastly refused to neaten the results: as the salt dissolved, it formed a solution which in part recrystallized upon the block, but elsewhere ran down onto the floor and dried out

The beautiful natural light of Linda Kirkland's forehead gallery created an appropriate setting for a complementary work, Bradshaw's Indeterminacy I-IV (1997) Here she placed chunk of pyrite (also known as "fool's gold") atop one-foot cubes of limestone. Previously locate outdoors and exposed to the uncompounded bodys the chunks of pyrite had weathered, shrinking in size and leaving rusty stains upon the pedestals. In both this work and Negative Ions, time was the engine of gradual transformation, leading to the entropic state at which we finally might consider the piece "finished."

There are obvious echoe of Robert Smithson here, particularly the shared interest in crystal formation and geochemical processe at the same time where Smithson was careful always to maintain a dialectical tension between nature and tillage Bradshaw gives more weight to the former. She is perhaps as plenteous alchemist as artist, conjuring various forces: the flask in Negative Ions became an instrument of containment and command which directed liquid to get the upper hand of obdurate rock.

These alchemical pursuits are level clearer in the Contingency Pours (1998) displayed at Linda Kirkland. Shortly before the opening of the exhibition, the artist overspreaded four thin rectangles of silver with liver of sulfur solution and mountained them on the wall. During the step quickly of the show, tarnish overcame the pristine surfaces. (A similar proces have the charge ofed Contingency [Book], 1995-97, on view in Sandra Gering's shoot forward room.) The coppery-blue and white crusts were quite evocative, and begged the question of what, precisely, was the nature of this beauty. For the experience of Contingency Pours was akin to looking not at the follow of an artist's decisionmaking on the other hand at a rare stone or piece of coral whose beauty have the appearances to lie outside human determination. An adept of John Cage, Bradshaw pushed us, in a salutary fashion, beyond the conventional gallery experience.

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