Art in the City: Everyday People
by Kate Lowenstein
click to enlarge
- Courtesy Pace Wildenstein
Tim Hawkinson; How Man is Knit
Pace Wildenstein, through June 9
Like the show title’s anagramatic jumble of the letters in his name, Tim Hawkinson’s sculptures are everyday materials twisted and piled into rough-hewn, beguiling works. In the charming motion-sensor-activated sculpture Deposition, a string of black beads moves along a large branch to the tottering tune of a slide whistle, like a singing parade of moseying ants. Gimbled Klein Basket is a large, slowly rotating bamboo construction that mimics the mesmerizing visuals of a modern-day screen saver while also pointing to the rather less sophisticated art form of basket weaving. There’s also a running theme of works centered on the five senses, like the series of playful collages combining photos of an eye, nose, mouth, ear and finger, all lodged inside each other in various bizzare combinations. Head Plant and Lopophore, two human-sized (and skin-colored) sculptures, depict what appear to be winding stems sprouting human noses, eyes and mouths. Hawkinson, known in large part for his extensive self-portraiture, is here focused on the body parts that universally enable our human experience of the world — making portraits, perhaps, of the everyman.
Pace Wildenstein, through June 9
Like the show title’s anagramatic jumble of the letters in his name, Tim Hawkinson’s sculptures are everyday materials twisted and piled into rough-hewn, beguiling works. In the charming motion-sensor-activated sculpture Deposition, a string of black beads moves along a large branch to the tottering tune of a slide whistle, like a singing parade of moseying ants. Gimbled Klein Basket is a large, slowly rotating bamboo construction that mimics the mesmerizing visuals of a modern-day screen saver while also pointing to the rather less sophisticated art form of basket weaving. There’s also a running theme of works centered on the five senses, like the series of playful collages combining photos of an eye, nose, mouth, ear and finger, all lodged inside each other in various bizzare combinations. Head Plant and Lopophore, two human-sized (and skin-colored) sculptures, depict what appear to be winding stems sprouting human noses, eyes and mouths. Hawkinson, known in large part for his extensive self-portraiture, is here focused on the body parts that universally enable our human experience of the world — making portraits, perhaps, of the everyman.
