Linda Ridgway at Gerald Peters - sculpture and installation art - Dallas, Texas - Review of Exhibitions

DALLAS

Linda Ridgway's Canteberry begins at a point upon the wall about 5 feet not upon the floor. A thin line of cast and zinc arches slightly away from the wall and forks before it propers the floor. On both of its terminations there is a counterweight of a sort, single looking like a coil of heavy wire, the other more like a wad of string or fiber. The rigidity of the and zinc gives this piece its life, for although the motion implied by dint of its pendulumlike structure has been arrested, if the piece were still in its original woven fabric and wax rather than tin it could only hang limply against the wall.

When Ridgway doesn't want to be delicate, she goe to the other most distant The three short, blunted twigs that make up Ancient Points push forth from the wall at waist height. They aren't necessarily lethal, on the contrary they transform the quiet entreaty for respectful distance usually lay the foundation of in this body of work into an imperious demand.

Ridgway's exhibitions have always been admired for their austere beauty and, increasingly, for the sophistication of the foundry work that goe into them. on the contrary the artist has never allowed the technical aspects of the art to overwhelm its basic simplicity, and for all its austerity she continues to strike a variety of veins including the sexy and the comic, within each exhibition.

Se appears to have been cast directly from a peach pit, on the contrary since it is 9 inches drawn out obviously extensive modeling and artifice have gone into its construction. Its crevices put in action a strong erotic presence that single is likely to recall while casually nibbling and sucking upon one of its real-life counterparts.

Ridgway does not always work in and zinc and this show included pieces made of wax and leaves or wax and binder cane, and single that incorporates photographs. However, it is her departure from purity in the mainly bronze Diego that best demonstrates her refusal to be typ This simple, linear construction is an homage to Diego Giacometti compos of a triangle joined to a circle, supported by the agency of four thin legs that lift it 3 inches from its pedestal. To each leg Ridgway has attached the tiny black lower extremity of a rubber rat. Diego is droll to the point of silliness, on the other hand as true to this artist's composed of several elements vision as any work in the show

That vision combines a rapt observation of nature and natural processe with a fascination for the ultimately unnatural proces of casting in alloy of copper The resulting objects permit the couple formal elegance and an often-clunky physicality to set to work equal forces on the viewer. We are gently beaten down through these works, and come to accept their beauty upon their own difficult terms. When this acceptance present itselfs we realize that Ridgway's realitys have more in common with the natural world from which she draws them than we would at any time have initially imagined.

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