A Salute to the Withered Rose (review)

Bright Bimpong, Untitled, 1994 {Mild steei). Courtesy of Skoto Gallery, NYC. prove human superiority. It is, it seems to me, an attempt to use art as a sort of homage to nature. We find spherical objects everywhere in nature—beginning with the primary sources of light. And though the grid, of course, also exists in nature, the sphere seems, at least for some civilizations, to exist: as a more common trope for the sublime. And from the womb in its reproductive phase to the posture we often assume in moments of fear and trembling, the spherical figure seems that to which we often return when our senses are at their most intense and sensitive. These speculations came to me as I looked at a modest show at the Skoto Gallery in Soho of work by two sculptors, Tom Otterness, an American, and Bright Bimpong, who was born and raised in Ghana. In the dual exhibition they held at Skoto in February, both artists used the sphere as a main motif, and both raised essential questions about the round, the square, the eye that sees both, and by extension, the civilization through which the looking takes place. Otterness's figures, figurines and drawings have about them hints of cartoon illustration , surrealism and post-World War II School-of-Paris absurdism. He is obviously taken with that moment in modern history when surrealist speculations were drowned in the absurdity of war and Auschwitz, only to reemerge as stark commentary on the possibility humans have for self-conscious self annihilation. This "sociological" tinge was a part of much European art coming from that war (think, of course, of Picasso, of Giacometti and Dubuffet). And the figurines produced by Otterness seem to hold that sensibility as inspiration. His "Primary Human" series, with its brightly colored, hairless figures , each possessing a penis and one female breast, seem to be primordial beings, seeking a place, not among humans so much, as in the earth itself. On one level, there is a sort of facile symbolism in this work. It's almost as if the artist is leading you by the hand. But the simplicity is deceptive. His "Fallen Dreamer," for instance, in which a plaster head is positioned , right ear down on the floor, while an orange figure of indeterminate species whispers in his ear, is not only a playful, childlike image. It is an image that violates reason. What kind of figure is whispering? Who is hearing? What, or how is the hearer dreaming ? Of course, we see none of this. All we see is a fallen dreamer and a figure (his dream?) whispering into the fallen one's ear. Though the dreamer may be fallen, the effect is of a loving pair of figures: the dreamer and his dream. Things at first seem more straightforward with Bright Bimpong's work. A woman sits, forlornly, on a cabinet. Another figure balances five spherical objects on his nose. A third—a torso without head or feet—reclines on her back. What could be simpler? There is a sense, especially in a work like "Huhuuhunye -hu," with its figure resting on an open cabinet, of a wholly different sense of time than we commonly find used to in art. One's first impulse is to see the cabinet as the site of a theft. But I think that's too simple a conclusion . The sense I get from this work—the title roughly translates, I'm told, as "Ain't no mountain high enough"—is of someone facing , and accepting the challenge. The cabinet —I use the term loosely here—is, it seems, part of the challenge. And the figure, earthen, portly and staring at some private point in space, is itself in no hurry. What brings to mind this issue of grids and circles is the way mystery remains uncodified in Bimpong's deceptively simple sculptures . The figure balancing the spherical objects does, in a sense, seem a reference to some specific cultural practice. But the objects appear to have no particular use value, even though the work appears to connote some sense of ritual. Yet we are left with no sermons, no terminal points. The...