Paul Kass: New Sculpture
By Fred Camper
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An edgy, obsessive repetition distinguishes White Pine, with its six pillars and its sets of 27 disks, two sets on each pillar unaccountably larger than the other two. But most interesting is the fact that Kass uses his hands to try to efface the natural variations of the human touch–the disks are evenly spaced, and the white is a flat laminate–while retaining the variations that are the results of the materials and the room: the natural grain of the wood and the different lengths to which the connecting screws are adjusted. The idea expressed by Josef Albers and others that an artist should be profoundly aware of his materials has been replaced by a concept more self-effacing: while Kass’s overall shapes are articulate and expressive, he often leaves his raw materials alone, and the details come from their random qualities.
Kass was born in Chicago, in 1967, and lives here now, but he grew up mostly in Saint Louis, where his parents moved into a “beautiful old home with incredible workmanship” in a historic neighborhood. He recalls an early obsession with masking tape: “I wrapped up stuffed animals in it, I think. I just liked to play with it in general, taping stuff together.” A wrestler in high school and college, Kass believes he learned strategy and balance from the sport and liked “the element of sacrifice” in fasting before a match. Eventually he enrolled in the San Francisco Art Institute, where a ceramics instructor encouraged him to “just keep making” the little pyramids he found himself creating: “This was the transition to the thought that I could make a bunch of stuff piled on the floor and that was valid in itself–it didn’t have to have some political message, like this is about crack houses.” For his final school project Kass spent six months making clay balls the size of large marbles and piling them on top of each other. “I got very fast at it. I have an appetite for things that involve repetition, I don’t know why.”
Where is the artist’s hand? Where does the art reside? The two questions Kass raises also came to mind when I saw Jonah Freeman’s small installation Nervous? at Ten in One. A small video projector casts the pale, silent image of a woman vacuuming on a canvas; across the center of the image the word “nervous?” is neatly printed. At first it’s not clear what’s painted on the canvas and what’s projected; in fact “nervous?” and an abstract reddish pattern are painted, but the video image also has a rusty hue. Either element by itself wouldn’t be very interesting, but together they create an indeterminate but evocative image. Vacuuming down a hallway, the woman moves slowly and inexorably toward us, creating a sense of unease. When she’s almost in close-up the three-minute loop Freeman taped of a friend ends, and she begins vacuuming in the distance again.
Art accompanying story in printed newspaper (not available in this archive): “Sline” by Paul Kass/.
