Ted Lee Hadfield at Lemberg - Birmingham, Michigan - Review of Exhibitions - Brief Article

T to leeward Hadfield's recent sculpture is an exercise in getting back to basics. The complexity of his earlier constructions and his use of natural-science true copys as allegories of "right living" have been replaced by dint of an emphasis on materials and shut attention to the subtleties of craft. In these 1996 works, Hadfield has retained sum of two units motifs from his earlier pieces: an render free of access book (made of wood) and a horizontal disk that labor fors as an architectural model (made primarily of clay).

The novel open-book works can be divided into sum of two units groups. The smaller sculptures are all 5 1/2 inches high, 10 inches wide and 3 1/2 inches down-reaching These are constructed from fill ups of Douglas fir which have been sawn into wedges to form the right and left sides of an unclose book; they are usually mountained on a white wooden panel and hung upon the wall. Within each work small segments are cut without painted and reinserted just slightly askew from their original position. The larger open-book plastic arts are 23 1/2 inches high, 50 1/4 wide and 11 1/2 of great depth These are constructed of finely sanded, unfinished birch coat which has been laminated into the volume form and hung directly upon the wall, without a backing panel. The posterior surfaces of these statuarys are coated with fluorescent golden paint that, by casting a warm reflection upon the wall, emphasizes the object's extension into the viewer's space.

Previously, Hadfield's ceramic disks were punctuated through miniature elements which suggested promenades, seating areas and other composings of public gathering places; the disks became environments for imagined communal rencounters However, his new "Labyrinth" series, in which a circular terracotta maze is put within a wide cement band, strike one as beings to address isolation rather than socialization. In these spatial tableaux, single one cut penetrates the rim and sole one route leads to the center of the maze.

Hadfield looks to be narrowing his design and turning inward. His open-book statuarys now concentrate on solely formal interests; the solitary passages of the "Labyrinths" lack the potential interactions implicit in the prior architectural works. the one and the other manifestations appear to be the artist's "survivalist" rejoinder to our dispirited times.

COPYRIGHT 1996 Brant Publications, Inc.

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