Art
Wheres the Matter?: On the Sculpture of Kenneth Snelson
Having written a text on Kenneth Snelson’s digital stone sculpture based on his theories of the atom, which he showed this past summer in Beijing, I was curious to view some of the recent steel and cable work for which he is best known. In fact, the exhibition held last month at Marlborough Chelsea is more than just recent work. Rather, it comprises a kind of survey that goes back to the late 40s and 50s, specifically when he was in contact with such luminaries as Joseph Albers and Willem de Kooning at the famous Bauhaus transplant institution in North Carolina called Black Mountain College. The early works include two Moving Column pieces in wire and clay (1948), partially inspired by Alexander Calder, and his Moving X-Piece (also 1948) in wood and nylon, which, in turn, inspired the “tensegrity” (tension + integrity) theories of Buckminster Fuller. While the word “tensegrity” belonged to Fuller, it was Snelson’s three-dimensional plywood X forms that gave Fuller’s theories visual and physical substance.

After a gradual disillusionment with Fuller, whom the artist believed had expropriated his work in order to suit the architect’s own ideas, Snelson decided to spend a few years working in the motion picture industry in New York City as a cameraman. However, by the late 50s, nearly a decade later, Snelson renewed his acquaintance with Fuller and began to commit himself fully to sculpture (although previously he had painted, and before that, had equivocated between architecture and engineering). An important work from 1959, made in aluminum and stainless steel, titled Double Star, is a complex integration of Snelson’s tension and compression theories, in which sculpture is defined not solely as mass but as energy delineated within a closed system. In an interview from 1991, Snelson described his obsession (his word) to extend geometry through sculpture by giving attention to the forces that make geometry happen. Thus, throughout the 60s, we observe the leaps and bounds the artist begins to make in coming to terms with his obsession, including such works as Atom (1965), Three Reds (1966), and Sun Run (1967). A large outdoor piece, Audry (1966), not included in the show but illustrated in Jack Burnham’s classic text, Beyond Modern Sculpture (1968), offers an early example of Snelson’s interest in scale and how the out-of-doors environment seems to reinforce the principle of “energy” in art (as in science), and thereby liberate sculpture from its dependency on the density of matter.
Clearly, the dominant work at Marlborough Chelsea and, in fact, one of the most precise, largest, and articulate works expressing Snelson’s extended interest in the precepts of physical science, how their realities prevail and, perhaps, even extend the parameters of the known universe, is a work entitled Sleeping Dragon (2002-2003). Resting on three stainless steel pylons, as it did in 2006 during Snelson’s outdoor exhibition at the Palais Royale in Paris, Sleeping Dragon literally encompasses the site as its suspended tetrahedrons, constructed with aluminum cylinders and cable wire, undulate through the space. Although I am acquainted with the artist and have spoken with him more than once, I forgot to ask if the title is an indirect reference to the Ang Lee film, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, in which the power of the male force in the yin-yang remains hidden. Similarly, the interlocking tensions that manage to hold these multiple components in suspension, as a complement to the sculpture’s poetic and aesthetic dimension, are particularly awe-inspiring.
In addition to his architectural and aesthetic expertise, Snelson is also a photographer who, in 1982, presented an exhibition at Marlborough Gallery uptown of his panoramic views of bridges in Paris and New York. Much later, it occurred to me that a not so distant precursor, Gustave Eiffel, known for his tower in Paris (completed in cast iron in 1889, six months before the invention of Bessemer steel) built a series of bridges in Spain and Portugal by which he tested various structural tensions.
Contributor
Robert C. MorganRobert C. Morgan is a non-objective painter who lectures on art and writes art criticism. In 2017, he was given an overview of his career as an artist at Proyectos Monclova in Mexico City. Known primarily for his writing and curatorial projects, Morgan has published numerous books and catalogues internationally, now translated into 20 languages. His anthologies of criticism on Gary Hill and Bruce Nauman were published in 2000 and 2002 respectively through Johns Hopkins Press. www.robertcmorgan.com
RECOMMENDED ARTICLES

Conversations About Sculpture
By Phillip GriffithNOV 2019 | Art Books
In May 2008, as the Parisian daylight stretched into summer hours, Richard Serras set of five 56-foot-tall steel plates, Promenade, had taken over the citys cavernous, glass-roofed Grand Palais. In the Tuileries Garden, Serras 1983 work Clara-Clara, with its paired, inverted semicircles (or more precisely, conical sections), had been reinstalled in its original location at the gardens gate to accompany the new work.

Christopher Wilmarth: Sculpture and Drawings from the 1970s
By Jan AvgikosAPRIL 2020 | ArtSeen
A new exhibition at Craig F. Starr Gallery presents a rare opportunity to revisit Christopher Wilmarth's serene glass and steel sculptures of the 1970s. No drama, no mess, no rough edges, nothing but the Apollonian perfection of flawless, hydrofluoric acid-etched translucent glass surfaces that attract and hold the light, reflecting in their layered depths tonal ranges from frosty white to pure aqua.
James Hyde: Public Sculpture
By Hovey BrockDEC 20-JAN 21 | ArtSeen
This exhibition extends James Hydes current practice of combining photographic imagery with paint and other materials on a variety of flat surfaces, including linen, board, and steel. Playing with the conventions of painting, these works have aesthetic appeal, but Hyde is after bigger game.
Printed Matter
By Megan N. LibertyMAR 2020 | ArTonic
Printed Matter has something of a legendary origin story, equal parts oral history, hearsay, and gossip, passed down through the decades in letters, postcards, photographs, and artist accounts. The exact series of events remains a bit murkynearly all the early participants claim status as an originator.