Ross Rudel at Angles - Santa Monica, California - Review of Exhibitions - Brief Article

The forms of a certain number of of Ross Rudel's wood, leather and fabric wall plastic arts might be compared with Edward Weston's photographic in a state of natures those flesh-padded conversions of skeletal geometry into the greatest in quantity generalized of organic curves. Thus Rudel's work can be placed in the body-art genre as it was in Suzanne Ramljak's "Seductive Matter" exhibition in Houston and Washington last year (at Rice University and the Corcoran). on the contrary he can also stand unrestrained of that specificity and take a place with abstract sculptors similar as Martin Puryear and John Duff or be linked with other younger artists who share his look up to for the contribution of craftsmanship to the impact and meaning of the work, similar as Christopher Lucas or Christopher Hewat.

At Angles Rudel showed 12 works from 1995 and '96 Each modest-size plastic art commanded a distance the forms are minimalistic, just simple, elegant shapes with little embellishment. on the contrary surface contributes enormously to the result of Rudel's work, and the shut up view is essential. It's from nearby that the workmanship is evident. It's also at this distance that the stretched leather greatest in quantity suggests human skin, particularly when ligatureed with a layer of undergarmentlike trap or lace that is sometimes with equal reason integrated that it looks ornament in reliefed or printed. Up close, individual savors an almost gratuitous beauty. For instance, Untitled No. 187 is a darkstained, satin-polished made of wood ball 4 inches in diameter to which a real star-shaped, tigerspotted flower has been applied. The simplicity of the form and the drama of the flower's shape and patterning give this work the power of an icon or an apparition.

Untitled No. 185 is a circulared floor piece of stained forest-land and rawhide nestled so tightly into a corner that single thought of an animal trying to burrow on the outside of sight. Its size, 18 through 18 by 19 inches, supports that association, on the contrary its inflated smoothness doesn't Untitled No. 196 is a turned-wood extremity 1 3/4 inches in diameter and 10 feet tall. While the cylindrical undulations of the extremity are attractive (like a bedpost or chair leg aspiring to be the Endles Column) this piece was greatest in quantity interesting as spatial punctuation, an exclamation mark among all the globular dot-forms in the present to view The largest work was the greatest in quantity suggestively erotic. Untitled No. 198 is a wall-mounted 4-by-5-foot ellipse almost 2 feet thick. The warm tan leather pen s into an undulating curve at the center that allude tos neither mouth nor navel nor anus on the contrary some unspecified seductive pucker.

Whatever the materials used. Rudel's plastic art conveys a sense of calm, a feeling that he works at it until everything is right. The exhibit could have been tiresome if all the statuarys had the sexual suggestion of skin and lace, on the contrary fortunately that was just individual sensory take among many equally satisfying options.

COPYRIGHT 1996 Brant Publications, Inc.

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