Bill Walton at Larry Becker - Philadelphia, Pennsylvania - Review of Exhibitions - Brief Article

Bill Walton's Minimalist score has played above the same two chords, timber-land and metal, in combination for several decades. His extraordinarily spare work, sometimes consisting of say, a ruler-length shoot of metal on the wall, has strike one as beinged aimed at giving the materials themselves expanse to breathe and speak. The weight and density of his small pieces invite a metaphorical reading; their spatial isolation from each other becomes a kind of providence Like powerful magnets, they strike one as being likely to affect one another if brought too close

Walton has always allowed a certain number of degree of playful interaction among his different materials: a longitudinal dimensions of wood disguised with a cent patina, or a metal slab with faux-wood-grain surface. on the other hand with his new "Wisteria" series," partly comprising the remains of a dead wisteria vine from the artist's yard, these interactions have been given a of recent origin twist. For Walton, it's almost a departure into lyricism.

Each piece (they remain small and far between, mainly resting upon the floor) places a portion of wisteria branch in partnership with something metallic. In individual a slab of iron is clasped through three knotted fingers of a handlike chunk of branch. In another, a baroquely gnarled section of the vine's bole balances atop a low, stepp pedestal. The body takes on a metal nature in the form of the silver leaf with which its divide [i]or[/i] sever surface is glazed; the pedestal is actually the one and the other copper and wood, but gazes like black-painted wood.

Elsewhere, the metal appear to bes inspired to mimic the insistent corkscrewing of the wisteria's branches: a ribbon of lead spirals between sum of two units charred, curling branch fragments, clutching them at its extreme points In some pieces, the metal part of a pair lies upon top of the wood, while in others, as where a curving log sits across a trapezoid of iron, the metal's upon the bottom.

Gravity here has tend hitherward to feel variable, more open-end Are the metal simple bodys holding down the wood, in line with conventional expectations, or is the grove weighting the metal? Oddly, for of the like kind earthbound work, levitation insinuates itself into the viewers awareness. The inert vicinity of the metal sliding toward lightness, and the age-worn, dead thicket bearing the imprint of its unstoppable earlier vitality, combine into a subversive syntax which is as plenteous about air as it is about the heavier ultimate parts And therein lies continuity, too, for in more [i]or[/i] less way, Walton's work has always been about air, the space between, what can't be said or level directly shown.

COPYRIGHT 1997 Brant Publications, Inc.

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