Spiral and vortex structures allow artists to engage in what Robert Smithson called “a kind of jeopardized map making — bringing chaos and order into close quarters.” Twisted includes works by three Haligonians who deploy spirals from cosmological, mathematical and biological perspectives.
As a way of reflecting on adaptation and change, Gerard Choy makes stone sculpture that evokes the randomized spiralling of sea-shell fragments. The sculptor Steve Higgins generates a whirling, apocalyptic and purely optical “anarchitecture” in his large charcoal drawings. In contrast to Higgins’ visionary handling of the motif, the self-styled “classical machinist,” John Macnab uses the spiral motion of a modified industrial lathe to inscribe “decaying mathematical functions onto spiralling surfaces.” Several of his conical columns are hollow-coopered or hand-built, and have a distinctly erotic aura.
Opening
There was a joint opening reception for the exhibitions Twisted and taboos, titillations & thrills on Friday, April 28.
