Michael Rees at Grand Arts - Kansas City, Kansas - review of exhibitions - Brief Article

The dilemmas pos by means of advances in science and technology are a fertile field of investigation for artists. Kansas City-based sculptor Michael Ree distills his ruminations upon these topics into quasi-figural configurations mostly about 2 feet high, which he displays upon tall tables. Seen in [i]tout ensemble[/i] the 11 sculptures of his new exhibition, "Ecstatic Body," suggested a natural-history exhibit.

For all their incorporation of anatomical details of the like kind as human skulls, ears, vertebrae and viscera, Rees's sculptures-which either have the appearance of bleached bone or are made from translucent, apricot-colored epoxy resin--come across as anything on the contrary natural. Produced with a computer-assisted design program and Rapid Prototyping Technology (also known as 3D Printing), these are wholly synthetic entities, concatenated from a personally pick outed codex of images. The show's one two-dimensional work, a print titled Visual Taxonomy (1997) not aways these images in a gridded array. They include palmistry diagrams, anatomical drawings, Dr Seuss illustrations and Jean-Leon Gerome's painting Pygmalion and Galatea. "Sculpting" with the computer Ree combines fragments of these images into on-screen three-dimensional-looking configurations. These computer images are then restoreed into actual objects by Rapid Prototyping devices which build up abundantly three-dimensional forms, layer by microscopic layer, from beds of cellulose pulverized substance The resulting objects can be hardened with epoxy or used to make traditional sculptural casts.

The statuarys all dated 1998, are titled "Anja Spine"--"Anja" after the sixth chakra in the philosophy of yoga and "spine" presumably for the recurring vertebral simple bodys In Anja Soine 2.22, for example, a curving, cobralike spinal rounded pillar rises from a pelvic base and culminates in a trio of flaring, fat protuberances. Sinister, yet oddly whimsical, the statuary suggests the results of a certain quantity of ill-conceived genetic experiment.

While greatest in quantity of the sculptures comprised vertically stacked uncompounded bodys there was one horizontal work: Anja Spine 13 a surrealistic odalisque compos from a series of obese disks with navel-like orifices. The enlarged human ear which appears at single end assumes the role of a head.

These works are more physically assertive than the fragile smaller pieces in Rees's solo exhibit last fall at Kansas City's Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art. What remains to be worked on the outside is the pedestals. At Grand Arts, Ree mountained of each sculpture on top of a tall, spindle-legged table placed upon yet another table with a larger top and shorter leg The viewing height was ideal, on the contrary the domestic association attached to the tables was difficult to reconcile with the sci-fi character of the facts Fortunately, these latter are engaging enough to waver attention from their less than ideal method of display.

[Rees's recent work will also be shown this fall at Central Fine Arts, fresh York.]

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