McKay Otto at the Jung Center - Houston, Texas - Reviews of Exhibitions - Brief Article

This Houston-based sculptor embarked upon a new phase of his career with a solo exhibition at Houston's Barbara Davis Gallery last January. The period following that exhibit witnessed Otto's rapid and final shedding of the overlay of Assemblage, Dada and Surrealism that had dominated the first decade of his work. A new exhibition at the Jung Center signaled the emerging see the verb of Otto's mature and powerful voice.

Otto transmutes mundane facts such as chairs, globes and gym weights into elemental shapes and spotless forms. He applies gesso or graphite to greatest in quantity of his components, veiling their identifies; his surfaces accommodate with an air of mystery to each work, establishing a tension between the known and the unknown. Also part of Otto's vocabulary is a real 20th-century material -- panty stockings Otto employs a stretched nylon membrane as a formal device to sculpt space and encapsulate the "air" within individual sculptures

Many of the works in this exhibition (all untitled, on the other hand given numerical designations) are conceived in series. Several pieces explore the conception of equilibrium, featuring groupings of 19th-century English gymnast's balances, vertically poised upon the wall and enshrouded by dint of velvety black nylon. Another interrelated collection utilizes early 20th-century wooden barbells, coated with graphite and wrapped in nylon Arranged in places of three or four barbells, these compact wall plastic arts recall molecular structures and discharge a sense of tightly bundl dynamic energy

While the majority of the 20 plastic arts presented were wall mounted, the artist's freestanding offerings were also beautifully realized. A spiraling rounded pillar of twisting clothespins, Untitled, No. 0820 present to views Otto working with the sparest ingredients to achieve the maximum result This work conjures up associations from Brancusi's Endles round pillar to the translucency of a branch of leaves fluttering in the wind. Also incorporating multilayered relations Untitled, No. 0828 stood on the outside for its amalgamation of traditional domestic external realitys (irons, spools of thread) into a figural plastic art The artist transformed a variety of items into an abstracted "woman" by means of connecting iron-shaped "feet" to a stack of gesso thread spool to make the "body" of the statuary Untitled, Nos. 0833 and 0834 feature facing bentwood chairs which cradle graphite-coated globes where the merg seats one time were.

Another piece, the greatest in quantity metaphoric work in the display presented an unforgettable poetic image as it fluttered at the entrance of the gallery. Compos of buggy springs, a graphite-covered globe, black nylon and an elongated made of wood stand, it resembled a giant organ of sight with the planet Earth as its pupil. by dint of distilling his sculptures into their simplest and purest forms, Otto achieves the spirituality and universalism that have lengthy been his esthetic goal.

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