February 8–15, 2001

art

Drutt Double Feature

Give the finger: Gerd Rothmann’s Index Finger, gold cast.

by Robin Rice

A View by Two

Robert Winokur

Helen Drutt, 1721 Walnut St., through Mar. 24, reception Feb. 17, 1-4 p.m., 215-735-1625

Just in case you hadn’t realized it, folks, those diamonds worn "forever" by sleek upscale silhouettes on your television screen are generic jewelry: the adornment equivalent of a Big Mac. Why not own or give something that does more than weigh down your fingers? Helen Drutt’s current show of haute cuisine jewelry and metalsmithing was officially open last week although a few items were still in transit. By now the eclectic work from artists in Austria, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Switzerland and the United States should all be on view. Drutt’s show shares its title and 14 artists with "A View by Two," which was organized by Louis Mueller and Barbara Seidenath for the Rhode Island School of Design, a major show of 165 pieces (through April 15 at the RISD Museum).

Not surprisingly, this jewelry has content — often playful, always provocative. In practical terms, Manfred Bischoff’s paired drawings and broaches can be displayed on a shelf as a single work of art. The combination of two mediums makes a more complex statement. Pale bits of mottled coral on Bischoff’s antic bug-like forms in matte gold look like geometric bits of flesh. Are Bischoff’s pins based on their companion sketches or are the pictures, often incorporating collage elements and writing, commentaries on the jewelry? It’s a dialogue. In one work, a reference to Piacenza, source of fine Italian liver, is linked to a liver-shaped pin. A flat triangle jutting from the liver may suggest nearby mountains. In a small photograph, a similar metal liver seems to be divided into labeled segments. Are they culinary, geographic or do they relate to the ancient Roman practice of scrying the livers of sacrificial animals?

Myra Mimlitsch-Gray shows several pieces made from graduated links of silver chain mail. A square pin comprised of empty crown-like findings (mountings for stones) is more characteristic of her deconstructive thinking. Gerd Rothmann takes an arte povera turn, transforming life’s residue into precious objects. Cast lemon seeds punctuate his silver hollowware bowl while wads of chewed gum reproduced in gold complete a choker.

Somewhere between Queen Victoria’s marble copies of her babies’ tiny hands and the infamous Plaster Casters of the ’60s, Rothmann’s casts of people’s noses and fingers preserve the transitory "forever." Drutt’s own gold Index Finger stands like an obelisk in its red box. "And one more thing …" it seems to say. Rothmann also casts gold fingerprints for sentimental objects like wedding rings.

One could also say "forever" with Sondra Sherman’s tiny hourglass ring in its box labeled Time. Love encloses minuscule diamonds under a large irregular crystal and Direction naturally requires a compass. A strong sense of symmetry informs Daniel Kruger’s jaunty jeweled bow of pierced silver "ribbon." Perspective puns animate Giampaolo Babetto’s gold and velvety royal blue cubes. Bernhard Schobinger’s small snake bracelet, coated in bright green powdered malachite, with its toothless red open mouth and black diamond eyes will surely tempt you to get to know all these interesting artists better.

Robert Winokur is well known for his furniture-related ceramic sculpture, but his first solo show in six years. also at Helen Drutt, consists almost entirely of houses. And this isn’t the only surprise. As a student, Winokur set out to be a painter. His slab-built clay has generally been characterized by flat, carefully considered, multi-colored, painting-like glazed surfaces. The new surfaces are still flat slabs, but now they are monochrome — black salt-glazed Pennsylvania brick clay, which in some respects is richer and more complex than ever.

A glaze is glass, that "super-cooled liquid" we all know from physics. Opaque glazes may be obtained by adding certain ingredients, but glass is glossy and transparent because it has solidified before crystals formed. If molten glass is held at the right temperature, crystals will grow. Winokur manipulates the temperature of the kiln to allow this to happen. In his most remarkable pieces, the entire surface of the house is patterned with small uniform crystals, peaked and ridged like delicate finger taps in soft cake frosting. Other effects are also engaging. Sometimes the black glaze is pitted and more randomly crystallized with a rusty metallic richness breaking around lines of construction.

The obelisk-like House as Monument, at 10 and 3-quarter inches high, is one of the smaller works. Like others in the series, it has four sides, a peaked roof and two minute square windows. It is an almost Platonic form from which all other houses might be inferred.

From "monument" to House as a Shrine, the house form is now crossed with a secondary peaked silhouette that hints at the transept of a Christian church: however, stark color and rigorous geometry suggest a more mysterious and demanding belief. A square recess in the upper story enshrines a second small house shape — a shrine within a shrine. This smaller structure is open, duplicating in simplified form the exterior house. One might speculate here on the common use of the house as metaphor for the person. Is the small house a "god" made in the image of the enclosing worshiper — or vice versa?

The motif of an opened but unpeopled display area is repeated in Cathedral on Two Houses, a long, almost gothic double tower sandwiching a narrow lower tower. Here a miniscule window illuminates the shrine. The more elaborate Ode to Blake is based on William Blake’s somber poem "A Vision." Like the other shrines, this one opening on the second floor seems not to offer human access, though it contains five steps leading to an open flat exterior. Under the peaked roof of the inner shrine, a small table or altar is illuminated by an opening that acts as a beacon drawing the eye deeper into the occult interior.

Winokur says, "Most children, if you give them a pencil and paper, will draw a house. In my mind, it’s as good a form as Madonna." The variations in this body of work encourage the consideration of specific symmetrical silhouettes: the four sides of the building considered with almost childlike simplicity. Unlike the shrine works, a group of silhouette/ pattern-oriented pieces appear to be essentially formal geometric variations. Brancusi’s House stands on a podium row of triangles suggestive of Brancusi’s carved African-influenced pedestals or his Endless Column laid sideways. House on Houses is a longish horizontal balanced on the gables of two small structures. The related Head of the House has a cubist feeling. It’s a medium-size flat-roofed house balanced apparently upside-down on two taller peaked buildings so its peak is composed of open space. It is a head, with a longish nose-like rectangle (the door) and windows that read as eyes.

Specific architecture figures in the Italiante Assisi, Upper and Lower Houses with its arched doorways and the Federalist influenced Short and Tall Cross Houses. Cleft House has an odd, almost ominous, medieval presence.

House Divided, from 1998, one of the earliest pieces, is notable for its complex references and a particularly appealing surface. The horizontal structure is separated at an unexpected 60-degree angle into two independent sections. A flat façade-like slab extends above the roof, presenting a false front that perhaps conceals the rift from the "person on the street." The metaphor is one of irreconcilable domestic differences, in which domesticity acquires a perhaps political significance. But what is "divided" still stands forming a functional whole.

The more recent Pas de Deux (2000) expands on the formal characteristics of House Divided by placing identical fragmented houses in a dance-like configuration. The do-si-do rhythm of the parts gives a lighter more capricious tone to the original configuration.

With this village, Winokur wrests a wide range of meaning from a popular motif. The subject works especially well for him because of his perfectionist but unpretentious approach to construction and the varied art historical and literary references he brings to it. He’s said he views the house as "a unique kind of container." It’s one into which he builds a variety of ideas while leaving room for the viewer to add personal associations and references.