New Haven Register (Sunday) (New Haven, CT)
Objects ask ‘What’s the matter?’
Handson exhibit colorful, satisfying
An explosion of colors, shapes and materials greet visitors to the Hilles Gallery at the Creative Arts Workshop in New Haven, where a group show of works by five artists focuses on the subject of “Matter,” its properties and its potential.
Every piece in this exhibit demands singular attention, despite the disparity of media, techniques and forms. And yet the inclusions manage to coexist well without competing.
United in their sense of physicality, their attention to material, their willingness to experiment and discover, the works make a strong case for the expressive power of handson artistry in an art world that has become increasingly digitized and remote.
Olivia Bonilla transforms gypsum cement into confectionery delights, her bright, jeweltoned cupcake towers dripping with mouthwatering appeal.
Mounted on pedestals in a checkerboard environment, the likes of “Watermelon Chocolate,” “Sour Patch” “Rugrat,” “Skinny Girl,” “Crayola” and “Grass is Greener” — all part of a single sculpture — are at once witty and disarming.
Every piece demands attention, despite media, technique
or form.
Fun in the best sense of the word, they are enjoyable to consider, emanating a playful atmosphere that is hard not to like. Upon closer inspection, one observes other objects, like pills and fake gems among the drips, the artist apparently alluding to the more serious societal issues of excess and consumerism.
Joseph Fucigna’s works also have a sense of unabashed physicality and flash.
Rooted in process, play and the innate qualities of the materials, Fucigna delights in transforming unrefined industrial materials — such as plastic, metal fencing, cable ties and rubber hoses — into complex new forms of life that endow them with a new presence and pride.
Both “Kryptonite White Hose No. 1” and “Orange Hose No. 2,” for example, composed of tightly structured forms and rich, rambunctious color, pulsate with energy. They seem at once to expand and contract, undulate and lie still, in a complex balance of enigmatic beauty that endows them with a new truth of their own. The blend of materials and narrative merge to become so much more than what one might expect from their humble origins, almost like an enhanced form of imminent life.
In thoughtprovoking and elegant installations, Howard elYasin takes pleasure in rescuing and finding new life in discarded materials and infusing them with an uncanny sense of order and dignity.
In one construction, it’s baked banana peels; in another, shredded trash bags and personal documents, which become the beautifully crafted, ghostly reminders that ask us to reexamine, reinvent and restore new life to these castoffs that have suffered the ravages of time.
Alan Neider’s sewn fabric abstractions “Paint and Tar 3” and “Paint and Tar 7” remind one of the concept of artmaking as a progression of creative endeavors.
Arresting in their sense of transformation, these densely layered wall hangings made of humble materials such as moving blankets, burlap, felt, newspaper, paint and tar, possess a roughhewn quality that is at once tightly structured and unresolved.
Moving between a sense of flatness and space, they pack a graphic punch that seems to mimic the messiness of life, the dense, multilayered elements of disparate surface variations, rips, holes and textures, transformed into a wholly integrated pieces that brim with confidence and strength, the seemingly haphazard arrangements taking on a new refinement and grace.
Thomas Stavovy employs modest materials such as wood, cardboard, scraps of metal and plaster to create minimal abstract sculptures.
At once linear and open, the exact meaning of these untitled pieces remains opaque, yet they retain both a raw and delicate directness that conveys a concern for the properties of material and physical forms in space.
Curated by Steven DiGiovanni, the exhibit confers a comforting satisfaction for the viewer in search of simply seeing works by accomplished artists who appear to enjoy the expressive potential of their craft.
“Matter” is on display through Sept. 25. The Hilles Gallery at Creative Arts Workshop, 80 Audubon St., is free and open to the public; hours are MondayFriday, 9 a.m. to 7 p.m, and Saturday 94:30 p.m.