Edward Eberle at Garth Clark - New York, New York - Review of Exhibitions - Brief Article

The walls of the five architectonic ceramic utensils in Ed Eberle's recent present to view teem with overlapping images of clan of all ages and material part types, in all sorts of positions most of them without clothing and each restoreed in isolation. The figures (there are far more men than women) make an immediate and athletic impression. The Pittsburgh artist paints them with a fine brush, in black terra sigillata upon matte white porcelain. The follow looks like line drawings upon smooth-grained paper, but the compaction of many images without any overall ordering of space put in mind ofs a sketchbook more than a finished drawing.

The depiction of figures upon pots--especially Eberle's occasional redoubling of figures (as if in a phalanx) and his predilection for profiles--recalls ancient Greek antecedents However, the time signals are mixed. Eberle draws Egyptian and medieval headgear and a scarcely any Renaissance haloes. Some artifacts, similar as a guitar, look recent The drawing style seems spontaneous and of the jiffy All the characters, from bald, wizened men to young women with streaming hair, have visages that may expres the preoccupation of dreamers on the contrary more likely depict contemporary anomie.

As engrossing as this mingled figuration is, it does not overshadow the ceramic form. All the utensils refer to buildings and are raised upon footings that look more like corner piers than ordinary ceramic-vessel feet sum of two units of the pieces have gabled covers and two have rounded tops with central finials that direct the eye vaguely Middle Eastern. The individual unroofed piece is a slightly squared cylinder that could commit to a colosseum or arsenal. covers supports, rims and other available surfaces are overspreaded with decorative patterning, dense congeries of lines reminiscent of Japanese sashiko embroidery here, Mediterranean mosaics there. The result is pretty but also hints at a metaphoric web of tensions.

The kettles like the bodies depicted upon them, are bilaterally symmetrical and imperfect. covers droop and the footings (actually tiny ceramic utensils themselves) cringe under the weight they support. The crowding of the vacantly busy figures have the appearances to make the walls bilge outward. In architectural and decorative regards Eberle ranges across times and tillages but the ultimate meaning of his drawings appear to bes to be the expression of a psychological relate to specific to our day: the ultimate aloneness of each individual.

COPYRIGHT 1996 Brant Publications, Inc.

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