WATER MILL, NY (PNAN) – Slated to go on view Sunday, November 6, 2022, “Mel Kendrick: Seeing Things in Things” at the Parrish Art Museum is the first major survey of the artist’s work highlighting his four-decade career
The exhibition explores how Kendrick (b.1949), a contemporary sculptor, pushes the limits of his materials, wood, rubber and concrete, to create sculpture that lays bare the process by which it was made, manipulating the language of abstraction with wit and rigor. Through his creative inquiry, Kendrick invites viewers to think about the relationships between representation and abstraction, sculpture and the body, organic and synthetic and natural and made by hand.
Focusing on the development of specific bodies of work, the comprehensive, multi-gallery exhibition provides insight into Kendrick’s unique approach to artmaking: One that is fueled by a tireless inquiry into the seemingly limitless possibility of sculpture.
The exhibit will feature more than 50 major works, including new sculptures and wall pieces, a grouping of small 3-dimensional sketches, works on paper and photographs from the early 1980s to the present.
The architecture of the Parrish galleries, with classically proportioned spaces flooded with natural light, is an inspiration for the artist. “This exhibition gives me the opportunity to imagine new relationships between my work and the spaces in which they are contained,” said Kendrick. “The Parrish is an iconic building with galleries that are especially welcoming to sculpture and that easily lend themselves to juxtapositions of scale—I find that exciting.”
Displayed in five galleries, the exhibit is carefully imagined to present works in relation to one another thematically, highlighting selections from the artist’s fundamental series, including monumental work like “Sculpture No. 4” (1991) from the series “Black Oil Sculptures” of medium-sized predominantly wood sculpture on metal bases dating from the 1980s, wood sculptures Kendrick refers to as “drawings” from 2000; and small-scale untitled mahogany and Japan color red works.
Many of Kendrick’s large-scale sculptures will be installed in the Harriet and Esteban Vicente Gallery, which spans the width of the Museum. In the center of the space, protruding into the east/west axis of the Museum, is “Nemo” (1983), an 18-foot-long sculpture never before shown in New York.
Throughout his practice, the artist has continued to explore the inherent possibilities of materials in myriad ways. His works reveal decisions and actions that led to their self-contained and self-referential construction. While their forms change, the subject matter always remains the same and making and the visual ironies revealed in the interaction of the two.
Works like “Black Trunk” (1995) and “Raised Stump” (1991-2018) reveal his process of deconstruction and reconstruction of materials. In “Big Daddy Fun/Second Version” (1995), two sculptures considered a single work, the artist explores the transformation that occurs when a specific form is recreated in contrasting materials.
For more information, contact Susan Galardi at galardis@parrishart.org or call 631-283-2118 x122.