Richard Hunt at the Studio Museum and Andre Zarre - New York, New York - Review of Exhibitions - Brief Article

As an African-American artist of international distinction, Richard chase can only be compared to Romare Bearden in boundarys of his creative influence and the inspirational force of his achievement. His formidable reputation wait ons to loom above his work, occasionally distracting the viewer. still in these two shows, it was clear that Hunt's ability to create dynamic, actual often thrilling sculptural displays remains undiminished.

chase came of age in Chicago in the late of 1950 His work has an exaggerated, abstract gestural quality that glance ats emotional release; experiencing it is true much like confronting a 3-D Abstract-Expressionist painting. With their sweeping organic lines slashing outward and upward as if on the outside of control, his pieces virtually propel through space, fluid, lucid and active, replete of cast or welded add-ons and metallic forms that dive end still more layers of fiendishly jagged fragments and bursts Although purely abstract, Hunt's works allude to a variety of the artist's interests and influences (through the two forms and titles). It's not surprising that the work many times seems to embody the faculty of perception of both freedom and looming danger, explosive power and spiritual exuberance, that can greatest in quantity clearly be linked with the emotional and historical landscape of African-American life.

on the other hand ultimately it is Hunt's sculptural intelligence, his virtuosic metal craft and the bravura improvisational character of the work's underlying draftsmanship that makes greatest in quantity of his sculpture impossible to resist. smooth the large pieces seem like briskly conceived drawings in space, impossibly liquid and charismatically flexible.

Downtown at Andre Zarre, the for the most part small recent works often glance ated a series of multi-dimensional platforms in space. on the contrary small or large, Hunt's pieces present the appearance to move, transforming themselves as the viewer walks around them. Despite their various extra-art associations, these works are fair form, pure drawing energy, nuanced, kinetic and filled of finicky little nooks and crannies.

The exhibition at the Studio Museum in Harlem featured a number of large works like as Flintlock Fantasy, a piece which shoot forwards a formal sense of that classic armament in the midst of an explosion of metallic waves; or Sculptural Improvisation #2 a swiveling central form encompassed by jutting limbs above and swirling limbs below. The large outdoor statuarys of rusting Cor-Ten steel, however, lack the soaring emotionalism and manic detail that animate in like manner much of Hunt's work, and they sat stolidly and unremarkably in the museum's statuary garden. The Studio Museum exhibit also included prints, maquettes and studies for a number of public works including the Eagle round pillars in Chicago and a particularly dramatic original for a Middle Passage Memorial.

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