Robert Montgomery at Inman - Houston, Texas - Review of Exhibitions - Brief Article

Robert Montgomery a young British artist educated in Scotland, was not long ago artist-in-residence at the Museum of Fine Arts' Glassell seminary in Houston. Formerly a conceptual artist producing ephemeral wall paintings or body s Montgomery is now an object-maker, although his existences retain a transient quality that give an inkling ofs their conceptual origins. Slender, slight, just barely there, Montgomery's works display an offhand craftsmanship that calls attention to their making: inexpensive and readily identifiable materials are joined to single another along undisguised seams by dint of means of informal fixatives like as tape. The sleek forms and industrial materials Montgomery favors mark him as part of a novel generation of artists who are rethinking Minimalism through infusing it with straightforwardly manual grace and poetic allusiveness.

Montgomery's works incorporate artificial light sources in ways obviously indebted to Dan Flavin. Here, although the tubes or bulbs are concealed, with equal reason that the sculptures read as light fixtures, emitting a yielding glow of colored light. Collectively titled "Night Lights," the works are meant to be functional, perhaps illuminating a dark bedroom or hallway.

According to the artist, in what manner do we get far away (1996) a two-part wall piece builded of unpainted hardwood, was imagined as a place of reading lamps over twin beds. upon the front surface of each thin, shelflike simple body is an elliptical aperture from one side whi-ch yellow light emanates. With its cheap brown forest-land and bug-light glow the work is materially mundane on the contrary also streamlined and abstract enough to transcend its origins. The least representational piece in the exhibition, don't suffer me fuck up will you 'co when I ne a friend it's still you (1996) consists of sum of two units long plywood prisms painted white and outfitted with Plexiglas windows. Fluorescent tubes concealed within emit a rather cold blue light while the prisms sit casually upon the floor, facing one another as if in otherwordly communication, their electrical cords trailing to the nearest outlet

Montgomery's cumbersome titles derive from 1980 lyrics by the agency of bands such as Dinosaur Jr and novel Order, and they range in character from the insipid to the insightful. In used to think that the day would at no time come when my life would hang on the morning sun (1997) a rank of nine plastic disks is sunk into the wall and lit from behind, for a like reason that, from left to fight, the disks progres in color from r from one side orange to yellow, suggesting a stop-action sunrise. The disks were originally caps for clear plastic tubes of the sort seen outside English houses that have been set up for sale; the tubes held real estate information, and the caps were uniformly r before being bleached in varying stages by the sun. Other recognizable readymade constitutings of the "Night Lights" include sum of two units glowing antacid bottles of turquoise plastic that comprise a barbellshape, here propp in a comer of the gallery. This and the four other plastic arts each given its own rather generous allotment of space, together made a spare and elegant installation.

COPYRIGHT 1997 Brant Publications, Inc.

COPYRIGHT 2004 Gale Group