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Bruno LaVerdiere at John Elder - New York
Art in America, Feb, 2003 by Janet Koplos
Bruno LaVerdiere's rectangular ceramic container titled Etruria II (2000) seems unquestionably to represent a relic box, but like all the sculptures and drawings in his recent show, it also seems to refer to architecture. Its footprint measures 19 by 29 inches, and its peaked lid/roof, which can be lifted off, makes it about 2 feet tall. The seam between lid and box reveals a lead lining, and the surface of the silvery clay, though pocked and scarred, glistens as if burnished by heat. The box, raised to 55 inches high on slender steel legs, stood in the dim gallery in a pool of light.
The show's lighting scheme--less theatrical than celestial--endorsed the suspicion that the sculptures possess a spiritual dimension; perhaps Roman Catholic, but not narrowly so. Except for a feeling of antiquity, the works have no obvious relation to the pre-Roman civilization of the Etruscans that the series title evokes. In Etruria III (2001), the largest work in the show, the lead-lined box has been extended in width and the roof pulled up to such a high peak that the whole looks like a wedge. It rests on a low, thick steel plate set on four massive, boxy wooden feet. The roof appears to have been built up with wads of clay from which the high points have been scraped off. Over this clotted expanse are patterns of scratches--here horizontal, there diagonal. The huge lid/ roof looks impossible to raise, despite protrusions that suggest a beam for lifting. Whatever might be entombed here would have to stay.
Etruria IV (2001-02) has the same steep pitch and lumpy surface as III, but its much narrower form is almost an obelisk. Its slenderness draws one's attention to narrow motifs in the eight drawings, all but one done in charcoal. They suggest silhouetted steeples, naves, side aisles, tall windows. Although only two of the drawings are large (75 and 94 inches high), each has an aspiring and austere form that seems monumental. Yet the softness of the edges of the silhouettes and the equal softness of the charcoal surfaces produce a soothing, gentle effect.
Perhaps it is more important to know that LaVerdiere spent time in the south of France--he was an artist in residence and then acting director at the La Napoule Art Foundation near Cannes in the `90s--than to know that he was, long ago, a Benedictine monk for 15 years. But both experiences seem relevant to the quiet serenity of his work, in which the energy invested in the drawn lines and the clumped surfaces seems to suck up all the stress in the atmosphere, and nullify it.
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