Jene Highstein at Anthony Grant

Jene Highstein's six new sculptures (all 2004) at Anthony Grant were carved in Sweden out of local granite and quartzite. Preparatory watercolors executed during 2003 (and also on display) show the artist exploring the swirling motions of tornadoes in monochrome washes over vigorous, curved lines of graphite. These drawings convey a looser, softer, more dynamic, open and transparent form than was achieved in the works carved out of stone, highlighting the changes that take place when an idea is translated from one medium to another.

Although the sculptures are all massive and floor-bound, their relation to the space they inhabit can vary markedly. The four taller works in the "Tornado" series, more or less funnel-shaped forms teetering between abstraction and figuration, suggest spiraling movement. The squatter, black granite "Dangerous Objects" seem to press upon the ground with all their weight.

The artist tricks us for a moment into believing that the solid mass of Dangerous Object (External), 28 1/2 by 38 by 30 1/2 inches, might have been extracted from the hollowed-out Dangerous Object (Internal), 28 1/2 by 35 by 29 1/2 inches, placed nearby. The silhouettes of these paired sculptures, with their bulging profiles and tilted tops, are almost identical, and the rough interior of Dangerous Object (Interior) matches in texture the outer surface of its counterpart. However, since both sculptures are of almost exactly the same size, one cannot be slipped into the other. The titles and playful illusionism of this pair allude to Surrealism.

The stylized "Tornadoes" hint at danger, too, though in their formal purity they hark back to Brancusi. The tall, columnar, light-gray granite Double Tornado (118 inches high), so-called because it is really two funnels placed end to end, narrowing toward its center, has the elan of the Romanian sculptor's Bird in Space. Spiraling grooves incised into its rough skin descend clockwise from the top and ascend clockwise from the bottom, meeting at an imaginary horizontal located at the shaft's narrowest point, several inches beneath the center. A shorter (38 inches tall) pair of sculptures, 1 Meter Tornado (External) and 1 Meter Tornado (Internal), carved out of red quartzite, play off each other in a manner similar to "Dangerous Objects," rough and smooth, solid and hollow.

1 Meter Tornado (External), left rough, is striated with grooves that rise clockwise from the narrow bottom and pursue their spiraling course, creating a wavy pattern as they cross the stone's natural striations. Highstein explores the beauty of his materials by playing off areas of raw stone against smoothed or polished surfaces. Exploiting discrete marks such as lines and grooves or irregular crevasses and bumps, he brings out a porousness, delicacy and vulnerability in his work, obtaining significant mileage from his varied treatment of the epidermis of more or less elementary volumes of stone.

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