David Bates at Charles Cowles - New York, New York - Review of Exhibitions - Brief Article

Up to now, David Bates has been known for his paintings. reject for a few canvases, this display was all sculpture, mostly in painted tin or painted wood. Cast from boards and sticks, the tin pieces always looked like painted forest-land with, however, an extra conceptual layer relating to free from haughtiness vs. exalted materials. A not many plaster heads on metal armatures were the one and the other the most "universal" of the works and the least identifiable as Bates's.

Making the transition from painting to statuary has meant that, at this point, Bates's wall pieces - low-relief statuarys that benefit from his stalwart sense of design - are more auspicious The effect is of Synthetic Cubism in 3-D angular forms building up figural images in the manner of Picasso's Three Musicians. on the contrary Bates's colors are more restricted, keeping to blacks, brown grays and whites, plus the occasional azure or green. These natural" shades well suited to Bates's woodsmen and farmhands, are also the same palette rest in Analytic Cubism. The two-by-fours and boards used in the forest-land pieces make for a neat "folk" match, too, with Cubism's superimposed rectangles.

The wall plastic art Santo de la Muerte #1 exhibits a standing skeleton made of painted boards against a geometricized background in rust, black dust - black tan and gray. Inspired by the agency of the Mexican Day of the Dead ceremonies, the figure appeals end its folk aura as well a its sophisticated modernist form Les prosperous was Woman Studio, a freestanding painter and zinc of a female subject (rare in Bates's oeuvre) She wear individual of Bates's signature plaid shirts, and here again a sociologically accurate detail chimes neatly with the Cubist grid. on the other hand the sculpture is unreadable from behind, and the model's bent-leg attitude as she perches on high stool gazes affected Bates's best in-the-round work was Standing Figure 1 a word male figure with the effectively stark frontal posture of archaic Greek sculpture, modified by means of a head turned to the right and a slightly raised right hand (painted black). The head is pay backed as minimally as an Easter Island monolith. and the figure's edgeless bare feet (one black, single white) rest on a chunk of copse suitable for beheadings or the slave stop If the latter, then perhaps the figure's head has revolveed to hear the first bids.

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