Martin Puryear at Donald Young
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Confessional, created in the late 90s, exemplifies a recurring motif: large, headlike shapes. More than six feet high and almost four feet wide, Confessional is made of wire mesh covered with tar and includes as its “face” a wooden “door” whose chalk markings reveal the wood’s intended use in building rather than fine art. In a permutation of the church confessional’s small interior screen, which allows the passage of secrets, the wire-and-tar surface is enveloping yet nearly impenetrable, a patchwork that combines wire of different gauges and only occasionally provides a glimpse of the interior. A small step blocks the door and makes the interior seem even less accessible. A cube has been cut from the door and attached in another place on the upper left, while a small round hole echoes a curved, hornlike “handle” next to it. Musing on abstract shapes, Confessional both excludes viewers and invites them into this enclosed space, which is visible but unreachable. This confessional will never work, but its fluctuating meanings evoke the mysteries of the human mind.
A Distant Place (2005) uses basswood, yellow pine, white pine, and maple burl in a combination of natural and architectural forms, contrasting polished geometric shapes with the knobby, irregular geography of the burl–essentially a big wart from a tree. A gray cross lying on its side supports this bulbous natural form while a long pole like a 14-foot lancet emerges from it. The lancet’s base, nestled into the top of the burl, is a box perforated by cutouts that connect to one another in the box’s center, creating circular, rectangular, and square tunnels of machinelike precision. The houselike box seems a metaphor for civilization, which rests on the foundation of the primordial. A Distant Place asks the viewer to reflect on how such a sophisticated form, the wooden column, could be made from this irregular, bark-covered material.
When: Through Sat 2/11: Tue-Fri 10-5:30, Sat 11-5:30 Where: Donald Young, 933 W. Washington Price: Free Info: 312-455-0100
