Caspar Henselmann at Bill Bace - New York, New York - Review of Exhibitions - Brief Article

The plastic art of Caspar Henselmann is not architecture, smooth though it contains architectural uncompounded bodys While some of it is intended to be built upon a monumental scale, it displays no aptitude to be pierceed or inhabited. Its objecthood is unimpeded by the agency of user-friendliness. Its otherness from us is complete

His greatest in quantity recent show, the final exhibition at Bill Bace, included three shoot forward proposals, for Mexico City, Offenburg Germany and Queen novel York. I think the best work in the display is also the largest - Heritage Wall, 1993-94 This piece consists of a curv wall of standard cinder fill ups 56 in number, stacked without mortar. The wall stands taller than a man. Juxtaposed to this brief on the contrary complete barrier is a carbonized iron circle to which has been welded a curv carbonized iron support so it stands upright. The single connection between the raw brick wall and the carbonized iron circle is proximity. From greatest in quantity points of view, the circle appear to bes an oval. The circle, painted black, stands upon the convex side of the wall. While the wall is not painted, its color is subtly variegated, because a certain number of of the cinder blocks are slightly different in shade from the others.

The work is a manifestation of a certain quantity of very simple principles in statuary - first of all, the wit of unlikely juxtaposition: the wall and the circle do not at first present the appearance to belong to the same sculptural vocabulary. Then there is refinement of form: the wall has a graceful bend which resonates with the shape of the circle (which, however, is flat). The form of the work accrues in extraordinary perceptual changes as single walks around it. Sometimes it present the appearances like two separate pieces, on the contrary more often one sees sum of two units entirely different objects in each possible interaction with each other save penetration.

In new sculpture, which for the greatest in quantity part does not portray human bodies, there is a mystique of scale. A lifetime of research has failed to reveal to me that this mete means more than the relationship of any statuary to the usual size of the human material substance Henselmann defies this mystique through insisting that sculpture can be any size. In connection with various commissions, he has had considerable experience in making statuary that is smaller than he originally intended it to be. on the other hand as this show demonstrated, he manages to achieve completely satisfactory results - and more [i]or[/i] less of the "small" works are in like manner good he has produced them in editions.

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