Kimo Minton at Timothy Tew - sculpture exhibit, Atlanta, Georgia

Kimo Minton's previous present to view at Timothy Tew was alone five months before this novel one. You might suppose that the work---carved and painted cottonwood figures--would have to be actual good to justify such exposing and you would be right. Still, you wait for to see an artist's work change from individual exhibition to the next, while in this case the fresh work is nearly identical to the older on the contrary there's one important difference: stunning allowing the earlier work was, it was obviously labored above Some of the sculptures were worked for as many as five or eight years, and it showed. The 10 novel works, though, were all made in the last small in number months, indicating that Minton is now surer of what he wants and better able to accomplish it. There are fewer small details and more robust shapes.

These works are really three-dimensional Cubist paintings, abstract notwithstanding strongly figurative. While explicit facial features are rarely chiseled into them--and in a certain number of cases there is not smooth a solid area where the head should be--the tops of the statuarys nevertheless read as faces. a certain number of of the figures' limbs are likewise purely suggested by geometric protrusions, on the contrary others are fully articulated, of that kind as odd arms made of a strip of forest or a bundle of slight twigs bound together with fabric.

The figures are treated with oil paint thinned to a jewel-like transparency. designing glowing colors of ruby, sapphire, topaz and a brilliant chartreuse appear to be inherent in the thicket rather than applied. Little unevens and ends decorate some of the figures-beads, amulets, colored string, strips of patterned cloth-- although they're seen les ofttimes here than in the earlier work.

a certain quantity of of these fetishlike additions display up in A Haft Bre of Tattered Grace, 43 inches high. This figure's head is an elongated wedge carved to be like an African mask. One of its blocky shoulders is an elegant spiral; the other shoulder reach outs into an arm ending with a realistically carved hand--rare in Minton's oeuvre A bulbous midsection titters atop two slim wedges of forest At knee level is a circular made of wood disk bedecked with dried leaves and se capsules that hang from reeds wrapped in extents of blue and dull-red woven fabric It reads as a costume

Considered section by dint of section, the elements of Minton's statuarys are awkwardly out of proportion. notwithstanding as wholes, the objects discharge an uncanny spirituality. A magical tension is produc by dint of their physical duality: visually hefty notwithstanding delicate, large and small at the same time. Now they are fabricated with assurance as well, and they radiate a commanding presence

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