Lee Tribe at Robert Steele - New York - Brief Article

Lee Tribe is one of the few sculptors with roots in the abstract tradition of Julio Gonzalez, David Smith and Anthony Caro who has stuck to his guns and successfully forged a personal style with a contemporary feel. In fact, he was one of the first to abandon the open constructivist idiom that became pervasive in the '70s and move toward a more organic approach that seemed to refer back to the notion of a sculptural body. In Tribe's case, the method is to form massive agglomerations of smaller steel parts that are forced into a unity through careful fitting and lots of welds. His recent exhibition featured nearly 30 pieces, including a few standing arabesques in his older mode, some delicate wall-hung work and a preponderance of solid or near-solid nuggets ranging in size from tiny fistfuls to substantial pedestal pieces.

The latter remain the most fascinating for this viewer. They often look like a twisted sort of still life or an implement or specimen that has been laid out for viewing. There are usually no holes all the way through but lots of protuberances and concavities. Searching for Bolden (2001)--presumably titled for the legendary jazz trumpeter Buddy Bolden--is like a horn metamorphosing into a snail, or vice versa. It lies heavily on its side and, like many of the other pieces, recalls a crustacean, armored yet alive, with a distressed surface, as if it had been underwater a long time. Ironheart Locked (1999-2001) is a hefty bent-heart shape covered with knobby protrusions and zigzagging ribs and bars. It might be a reliquary, but it looks more like an old pump, rusted solid. Given the title, this sculpture summons up somewhat melancholy medical associations with iron lungs and artificial organs, as well as the more obvious emotional implications. Both the horn and the heart have strong sexual overtones, and it seems possible that one of Tribe's sources, as he developed the vocabulary of these pieces, was tantric sculpture. The clenched sexual metaphor for the simultaneity of life and death that you see in those abstracted images of intercourse seems to underlie much of Tribe's new work.

Some of the very best pieces in the show are tiny. Steel Stone 1 (2000) and History Eyes (1999) would fit in your pocket and have a wonderfully talismanic quality, like a charm or a fossil. William Tucker has also cast some tiny pieces of this sort, and, in fact, there has been a fascinating interplay between these two sculptors. Tribe was Tucker's fabricator in the '70s but made his own contribution by exploring the vocabulary of mass and core, an approach that Tucker subsequently developed by abandoning construction altogether. I used to think Tribe should move to casting as well, but now I see that the way his pieces are built up by accretion, like a piece of coral, is essential to their power.

COPYRIGHT 2001 Brant Publications, Inc.
COPYRIGHT 2002 Gale Group