Sep. 09, 2009 - Issue #725: Sex in the City 2009
Angles
Christopher Berry's sculptures make up a one-sided collection
The strongest work is in the front room, directly to the left of the entrance. These works are lower and more triangular than the skyscrapers in the rest of the gallery, and probably sit the best in their space. Even when you are close, they don't lose this appeal, as this, the most rectangular of the FAB Gallery spaces keeps them strongly in focus. Of all of the works in the show, these are least formulaic—the others tend to be roughly rectangular towers with some step-like complications appearing about a third of the way from the top and a slightly more complicated base—and hold up the best to close examination.
In the other rooms, approaching Berry's sculptures strips them of a part of their magic. The striking diagonal lines aren't as impressive up close, but more importantly the sculptures themselves are disappointing. Berry says that he wants to entice and reward viewers to examine the sculptures from all sides, but his exhibition argues with this stated aim: all of the works have clear front and back sides, and are arranged to display the worked side as you enter each space. It's telling that the big FAB Gallery windows are covered, as viewing the sculptures in the front room, and throughout the show, from behind reveals an empty, unfinished set of surfaces which seem unconsidered.
Perhaps the unfinished reverses of these sculptures are intended as a kind of game, an intentional technique in a different set of work, but there seems to be little evidence of that here. In fact, in some ways it seems like cheating: Berry writes in his statement about an athletic struggle sometimes involved in creating the works as he struggles with the weight of the material, and their reaching heights also suggest a straightforward process of physical striving. That might not be the most exciting thesis for the show, but it doesn't even seem to be followed-through, especially with the disagreement between the clear two-dimensional staging and his writing.
Other aspects of the show seem also to be done by rote, without a critical engagement: these issues throw the material nature of the sculptures themselves into question, as Berry's carefully maintained even patina of rust and deliberately careless welding do little to distinguish themselves from the collection of work abandoned outdoors on the west side of the Fine Arts Building, or from any of the steel sculptures produced by numerous students at the U of A. In some ways, their phallic heights seem almost like a caricature of an idea of the modernist-descended steel sculpture beloved in Edmonton, even though they abandon attempts to render them complete objects with their empty spaces and unfinished backsides, but it seems a stretch to give them that much credit.
The name of the collection, Angles is in itself non-committal and that's a fair description of the show as a whole. Christopher Berry has either too many ideas floating around in his ostensibly unplanned sculpture, or too few. His writing seems to lean towards the latter, but whatever the cause, these sculptures don't seem to be about anything. V
Until Sat, Sep 26
Angles
Works by Christopher Berry
FAB Gallery (87 ave & 112 st)
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