Christopher Wilmarth at Sidney Janis - New York, New York - Review of Exhibitions - Brief Article

Christopher Wilmarth's works of the '70 and '80 display a sculptor's preoccupation with formal configurations and a painter's eye for surface, light and fabric This carefully curated exhibition of plastic art and works on paper, covering a certain number of 16 years, confirms that Wilmarth's work stands apart from the material emphasis within the Minimalist esthetic, aligning itself with a more European, poetic sensibility. Wilmarth (1943-1987) described his works as "instruments of evocation," suggesting that they were intended to transcend their materiality. Wilmarth's have a title to writing, both poetry and musings upon his working process, and his immersion in French Symbolist poesy are reflected in the intellectually rigorous and introspective nature of his art. although the show was not organized chronologically, the evolution of Wilmarth's sophistication as a sculptor investigating the events of light on and [i]or[/i] part of to the other sheets of glass was evident. smooth when other materials are introduced into a work, like as sheets of steel or carbonized iron cable, they are usually added to further explore the unique qualities of glass, which in Wilmarth's hands takes unexpect forms. sapphirine Time Line (1974) is a gently curving sheet of pale verdant glass that is held against the wall by means of a single steel cable. The focal point is the lower left corner, where a rectangular section has been remov There the vertically bisecting cable pop changes direction, passing behind the glass to horizontally continue the line of the make an incision in edge. The piece achieves a curious, almost subliminal order At 78 inches high, it give an inkling ofs a mirror and also the human vicinity and is at once eccentric in shape and almost invisible.

In addition to bending or cutting the glass, Wilmarth busyed hydrofluoric acid to etch the surface, introducing a brushed translucency that alters not alone the surface but anything seen end it. This was used to maximum event in works such as Nine Clearings for a Standing Man (1973) in which a large sheet of carburet of iron placed behind glass looks like a Richard Serra statuary seen through fog or mist. The slight 1 of the glass toward the top of this piece loans an atmospheric effect akin to a landscape viewed at. twilight. one as well as the other Cornerskin (1977) and Gnomen's Parade (Standard), 1980 treat glass as a membrane that reveals an inner structural uncompounded body In the latter, the glass appears to be tearing away from its support.

Obviously not intended as a replete career overview, the show included single one piece made after 1980 a work upon paper from 1987. Wilmarth's late glass-and-metal egg-shaped "heads," ofttimes attached to walls of mottl carbonized iron are deeply haunting forms that were probably his greatest in quantity personal statements. Still, the sum of two units small, lumpy glass proto-heads included here poignantly recommend the urgent work that was to follow

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