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Robert Chambers at Laumeier Sculpture Park
Art in America, Oct, 2004 by David Bonetti
Robert Chambers's ambitious exhibition, which included 19 works made over a 15-year period, looked as much like a science fair or a fun-house installation as an art show. On view in Laumeier mansion's five indoor galleries were objects that moved, made noise or pulsated with colored lights. In the only room that appeared to follow the traditional model of displaying discrete, unmoving and unblinking marble sculptures, the works turned out to be molecular models of such substances as ethanol, methanol and mustard gas. Carved in black Carrara marble, the ethanol configuration looks like an abstracted poodle, its tail just about to wag for a goodie.
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Chambers's inquiry as an artist parallels that of the scientist; he experiments with material, following happy results with further investigations. If the work he makes as sculpture derives from the scientific method, so much the better for it. Some of the results of this process are more successful as art than others. Particularly effective is Motorshag (2000), a shotgun wedding between a 1989 Harley Davidson motorcycle and a 1989 Raleigh bicycle, which share a front wheel. Activated by motion sensors, the piece makes quite a racket when turned on, and the energy generated powers the Harley's headlight. You could see the piece as an allegory of sex, but its beauty is that it is what it is and it needs no interpretation. Another engaging work is Fortuny King (1996), a giant pair of frankly scrotal silk bags that slowly inflate and then collapse into flaccidity in a manner that recalls another part of the male sexual apparatus. If Chambers, who lives in Miami, seems to have sex on his mind, you could blame that on Marcel Duchamp, whose playful method (and dirty mind) informs much of Chambers's practice.
The most Duchampian work here--though more optically than sexually--was Rotorelief (2002), a real McDonnell Douglas helicopter retrofitted with 7-foot-tall landing gear. In the work, which was installed outdoors, Chambers has replaced both front and rear propellers with giant versions of Duchamp's own "Rotoreliefs," black-and-white spiral patterns painted on disks that could prove hypnotic in action. The disappointment with Rotorelief was that neither time I visited the park was it "turned on." Many of the other pieces, which were made to be interactive, were victims of a "no-touch" policy. Potential pleasure and fun were stifled when the works were displayed static. If their intent was to move, honk and blink, but they sat there still and silent, something crucial was missing.--David Bonetti
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