When the sculptor Keith Sonnier
arrived in the late 1960s, he was identified with other young radicals
like Richard Serra, Eva Hesse, Bruce Nauman and Lynda Benglis as
“Post-Minimalist,” a catchall term that immediately wrote them into
history books. The label was meant to distinguish them from their
slightly older, Minimalist contemporaries, including Sol Lewitt, Carl
Andre, Donald Judd and Dan Flavin, all of whom used inflexible materials
for impersonal, geometric objects manufactured by others.
The Post-Minimalists,
on the other hand, made art out of cheap, even flimsy materials they
manipulated by hand to evoke the more sensual properties of the human
body. Sonnier’s works, fashioned from cheesecloth, silk, wire mesh,
latex or the neon that became his signature medium, were especially
supple and erotic, often made on the spot in the galleries where they
were shown. Flavin’s fluorescent lights were straight lines; Sonnier’s
twisted and curved, almost dancing in space.
“Flavin called us Dada
homosexuals,” Sonnier said the other day in his native Louisiana drawl,
recalling the rivalry between the two camps as a form of camaraderie.
“We were all in the same shows,” he said. “The only real difference is
that they used hard materials and ours were soft.”
These days, Sonnier,
now a burly, white-haired 72, works with both. “Elysian Plain + Early
Works,” a buoyant show of his wall-mounted neon works (some new, some
vintage) at the Pace Gallery
in Chelsea, maps his trajectory from the ephemeral to the durable, a
path elevated by the artist’s suggestive wit. In one early piece, “Neon
Wrapping Incandescent,” a pink neon curlicue rises between two nipples
of incandescent blue bulbs, their wires dangling to the floor like black
veins. “It’s like lingerie,” Sonnier said, laughing. “Very Frederick’s
of Hollywood.”
Two other neon works
from the period suggest tables or chairs that have materialized out of
thin air. “They’re about aligning space with architecture,” Sonnier
explained, pointing to “Mirror Slant,” a kind of slumping torso made a
few months ago, as another case in point. Composed of three sections
divided by yellow, red and blue lights, it has a square glass bottom
that looks as if it’s sliding drunkenly off the wall, but is supporting a
mirror that reflects another piece on the opposite wall,
call-and-response style.
The other recent works, made over the last three years in Sonnier’s
Bridgehampton, N.Y., studio, similarly balance sturdy geometrics with
weightless froth. “Lobbed Claw” has short, curving strokes of blue, red
and green neon floating behind thick, elliptical planes of clear
plexiglass that combine to form the shape of a painter’s palette. This
Sonnier compared to Wonder Woman’s translucent airplane. “Gorgeous,” he
said. “Schmoo” — the title is a nod to his Cajun roots — looks like a
transparent grand piano lid with steel hinges highlighted in pink, blue
and green.
Because his works emit
light that’s extremely flattering to both viewers and the surrounding
space, he has taken steps to keep them from becoming merely decorative
objects. He doesn’t hide wires or transformers; as with the
flesh-colored latex he smeared with tacky flocking early in his career,
he exults in what he calls the “perversity” of his materials. He also
embraces the illusionism that was anathema to the Minimalists, creating a
sense of depth by placing his colored lights on or under reflective
glass or mirrors that put viewers inside them.
As a younger artist,
Sonnier experimented with nascent technologies, collaborating in 1977
with the filmmaker Liza Bear on “Send/Receive,” which connected
galleries in New York and San Francisco via a live feed bounced off a
NASA satellite. The expense and logistical difficulties of the two-day
operation have kept him earthbound ever since. For his next project,
he’s collecting large stones and painting them.
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