Deconstructive constructivist: over more than 30 years, Don Gummer has moved from architecturally influenced installations to intricate, large-scale sculptures that give postmodern life to classic principles of abstract composition

Art in America, Jan, 2005 by Irving Sandler

Having arrived at a personal and distinctive formal vocabulary, Gummer extended it in diverse directions. In the early 1990s, he introduced into his work a variety of other materials, such as stainless steel, aluminum and stained glass. He also developed new themes and forms. In Core Belief (2002), an interior complex composed of a linear structure of open cubes is encircled by a curvilinear lattice. Perseverance (2002) consists of just a freestanding, spiraling, latticelike framework. Increasingly, he is intent on inventing new structures, combining forms that are right-angled and curved, solid and open, linear and planar, volumetric and void. The possibilities are infinite.

Gummer's shift from wood to more permanent materials was accompanied by an interest in public art. Among his works in public spaces are House of Music (1993) in Kitakyushu, Japan, and Primary Compass (2000) at the Butler Institute of American Art in Youngstown, Ohio. Recently, he has received two major new public commissions. One, still in the planning stages, will entail the fabrication at large scale (14 feet high) of Separation, Gummer's first major work (originally 14 inches high); it will be placed at the entrance of MASS MoCA in North Adams, Mass. A recent piece, Southern Circle, 25 feet high and made of stainless steel with stained-glass insets, was installed near the center of Indianapolis in the summer of 2004.

Ludwig Wittgenstein once wrote: "An old style can be translated into a new language, reintroduced so to speak, in a manner appropriate to our age." In our case, it is an age marked by flux and uncertainty that yearns for solutions but cannot accept utopian cravings, such as those of the original Constructivists. In extending and deflecting Constructivist art in a new direction, Gummer has rendered it peculiarly contemporary.

(1.) As Wade Saunders wrote about the embrace of traditional materials and techniques by the generation of sculptors horn between 1946 and 1955, "We make things ourselves, instead of jobbing them out.... Our passion is for centuries of modeled or carved figures and objects that preceded Minimalism." In "Talking Objects: Interviews with Ten Younger Sculptors," Art in America, November 1985, pp. 110-11.

(2.) Peter Plagens, "The Lyrical Constructivist," Don Gummer: Lyrical Constructivist, Youngstown, Ohio, Butler Institute of American Art, 2002, n.p.

Don Gummer exhibited new sculptures in New York at the Salander O'Reilly Gallery [Sept. 30-Oct. 25, 2003]. Two exhibitions for spring 2005 are in the planning stages.

Author: Irving Sandler's latest book is A Sweeper Up After Artists: A Memoir (2003).