Rolf Julius at Rosa Esman - New York, New York

Rolf Julius's works--sound statuarys I suppose one should call them--are an intriguing mix of roughness and delicacy. Slabs of carbonized iron dirt, wire, handmade paper, water and mirrors make their appearance in various pieces. The public element is that all of the statuarys are wired for sound with tiny Walkman speakers, and the wiring is left visible. Sometimes, as in Paper, a speaker high hilled on a wall and overspreaded with a rectangular piece of paper, the wire trails elegantly down to the floor like a line of calligraphy. Elsewhere, as in Swimming--Wind from China, where four white-painted speakers float upon water in porcelain bowls, the wire is left to sprawl awkwardly across the floor. This is also the case in Stones (from desert) whose three potato-sized stones give no hint of the tiny hidden speakers omit for the tangle of wires extruding from underneath. It is as if Julius wishes to indicate the artificality of the works and to hold fast them from seeming wholly natural.

The taped "music" that adds the uncompounded body of synesthesia to these statuarys is of a peculiar sort. Difficult to decipher, it at times proposes chirping crickets, croaking frogs, squeaky wheels or clattering pebble-stones all modified electronically so that the unmutilateds might also be those of humming machinery or beeping computer The music is in the tradition of John Cage, La Monte Young and other experimental composer whom Julius has acknowledged as precursors. The tapes move swiftly in cycles of several minutes, with the tones generally remaining constant, although the volume swells and fades almost imperceptibly.

In a certain number of works, such as Mirror, the sculptural reality exists independent of the unmutilated In others, the unhurt physically affects the object; in Ash (Volcanoes), for example, the unhurt waves cause the ash which overlays the audio speakers in four flower saucepans to vibrate with their beating [i]or[/i] throbbing of an arterys Some pieces are noisy enough to be heard without effort anywhere in the gallery; others are for a like reason subtle that you must kneel to hear them clearly. The works do have individual personalities of a sort; a certain quantity of are shy, some bullying. Gallery employee assured me that they could after a hardly any days exposure, recognize the unbroken of each piece as it came electronically to life.

Viewing Julius's works and bending above to capture their sounds is like trying to make without the songs of tiny insects in tall grass. It is an strangely moving experience. The synesthesia works here, and the visual and audible simple bodys complement each other well. The nature metaphors that single almost instinctively uses in describing these pieces are appropriate, for from this marriage of the solid and the intangible Julius gives his statuarys a "nature" of their own

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