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| Rogelio
Maxwell, Joanne Kent, Michael Gessner, Richard Siegman: Shelf Life: Sculpture
Installations DC Arts Center, Washington, DC January 12-February 18, 1996 By: Rebecca Crumlish washington review april/may 1996 |
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. . . The materials used in Joanne Kent's installations take us in a different direction. Her concern for the environment has led her to organic and biodegradable materials. Works themselves are recyclable, but her attraction is to the ancient, the monumental, the permanent. "Journals 1-12" are small, vertical wall pieces embossed to look like snakeskin with wisps of metal, wire and leather. A series of meditations, they allude to "the poetic stuff on the edges of your life," but their casual elegance shows formal concerns, an attempt to draw order from chaos. Kent's other installation, "Time Distrubance 1-5", is bigger, darker, rougher. Like standing stones mounted on a gallery wall, this piece has a brooding presence, mute as opposed to the almost musical Journals. Both a development and a departure from Kent's dark and richly textured paintings, these vertical wall pieces serve another purpose in the context of the entire exhibition, leading the eye in a different direction. . . . |