October 8–15, 1998

art

Seeing Through Grief

		Fragile as memory: Steven Tucker's Frozen in steel, glass, plastic

Loss and redemption in the exquisite objects of Steven Tucker.

by Violet Phillips

Steve Tucker: Selected Work

Nexus, 137 N. Second St., through Nov. 1, 629-1103

Steven Tucker opens his current exhibit at Nexus with the following quote, painted on the wall:

"Profound loss changes one's center. The shifting axis forces a search for equilibrium. Backward, forward, frozen—the voyage toward balance is a mournful wobble."

This is an exquisite sentiment, and a risky one. Though it unites the 12 small and large sculptural constructions on display, it also sets the artist the difficult task of finding a fresh approach to the well-mined territory of loss. (The show is dedicated to Tucker's late partner.) Yet by relying on his own—fortunately recognizable—iconography and his confident ease in combining materials, Tucker more than meets the challenge. Here is a visual statement at once personal and magnanimous about the pain and redemption that follow the death of someone loved.

		You know exactly what to do: step back, then move up, peer in and study these precisely and often simply made pieces

Given the careful use of recurring images—a tiny compass, a miniature boat, the photograph of an eye—the show actually works as an installation, though it's blessedly free of excess or confusion. Here, unlike some installations, you know exactly what to do: step back, then move up, peer in and study these precisely, and often simply, made pieces.

Tucker constructs with glass, metal, stone, sand, wood, hair (human, boar and goat) and a variety of bought and found objects (from mesh screens to little fishhooks). And everyday things take on big meanings when connected by his artistic and emotional sensibilities—and his refusal to let one material dominate. Consider Frozen, arguably the best work in the show and inarguably the smallest. Two 4-inch slabs of imperfect, bubbled glass encase one of the eye images, the whole thing held up, frame-like, by an equally small rusted vise. There is a sense that the whole structure could collapse, that it's as fragile as memory. Tucker has also linked the ephemeral quality of the glass to the tension of the metal without just producing a visual trick—a result that eludes many glass artists.

Tucker works as an exhibition designer, so the space, the lighting and the methods of installation are also integral. Hanging My Eyes Out to Dry—22 of the eye images reproduced on crumpled paper and held by baby clothespins to a 3-foot cord—escapes preciousness because the black cord, ends dangling, is tied onto rusted eyehooks driven straight into the wall. And a wall also holds up the largest piece in the show, Breaking the Surface, a wire grate through which a torturously twisted 10-foot vine, like a tree limb, emerges to assert a grey and gnarled grief.

The titles, too, add dimension to the theme: Reaper is a slender rust-patinaed pedestal on which several delicately sharpened wooden sticks impale a nest of hair. Promises Promises comprises two umbrellas, one of woven hair, the other with a handle of rope, that cry the impossibility of finding solace in another wounded soul. And Loci is a small pendulum hung from the ceiling over a cone that holds sand and one of the compasses.

I'd like to describe every work in the show. But I will conclude with Steven Tucker himself.

Examining Fortune Teller, the curved part of a brass horn stoppered with a crystal ball on one end and a gypsy-tail of horse hair on the other, I told my companion that I wanted to meet this artist. Minutes later, he magically appeared. I like to think that I conjured him, but I believe it was my prolonged presence in the gallery with a notepad that sent someone to the speed dial.

Tucker volunteered that it was his partner who had died, and he described the materials—some are obvious but none are listed. He said this was his first solo show in six years and that he had had no interest in working for a long while after the death. Then he said he had just bought a house and was delighted with the publicly visible garden attached to it: he is thinking he will make gardening his exclusive medium for a while, to confront people with art who might not ordinarily see it. I can understand his attraction to a form that grows, especially after such a difficult time; I just hope he'll advertise his address.

The other show in the gallery is Astrid Bowlby's small constructions of encaustic, wood, paint and other materials and her crosshatch ink drawings. Though the title Bounty and Residue is meant to be broad enough to encompass the many ideas and styles going on here, it is not. The works seem to have been done by three different artists, bonded only by a vague, dark humor. But the confusion does serve to highlight the standouts: the two non-figurative drawings, Dark Light of the Sun and Forest, and a slightly outsized encaustic reproduction of shoes, An Invitation Answered (Shoes), which are left in a telling configuration, the owner having evidently gone on to some sort of reward.