Color had to provide a contrast, not get lost in the surroundings, attract attention and invite viewer interaction.  With the work as the main focus, color could enhance the experience and lure one to walk around, see it from numerous perspectives, and even touch or climb.  This is not work for a pedestal, removed from the audience.  John Henry’s work summons awareness at a more intimate level, despite its often daunting scale, and the use of primary colors, with a penchant for red, facilitates such levels of engagement and is integral to the fully realized form in all its abstract objectivity.  Purified of everything extraneous to its own unique physicality, the sculpture retains its identification with the properties of pure primary colors, as it also reinforces their symbolic powers.  Red is the color of fire and passion, the most vibrant of colors.  He notes that some of our most noticeable (necessarily) objects are bright yellow – like fire hydrants; others are bright red, like STOP signs, and that primary colors (red, yellow, blue) cannot be made from mixing any other colors – they are absolute and complete, just as the mathematical simplicity of geometric shapes are absolute, exacting and inorganic. 

Henry projects his geometries on a colossal assertive scale, more like engineered structures, bridges or skyscrapers that suggest mathematical concepts toying with an erector set.  His vital forms reconcile issues of architecture with engineering through balance, cantilevered elements, and sheer ingenuity.  He also has a proclivity for working in series, maximizing the effectiveness of his structures with a builder’s cultivated sense of scale and interrelationships, and a fascination with tools, especially giant cranes and other machines necessary to facilitate the manipulation necessary to complete his projects.  Admitting to the influence of his family and their involvement in architecture and land development, both key to his work ethic, Henry was able to figure out how to make things fit and work together, how to design and assemble parts.[i]  It is no surprise that John Henry’s works seem so suited for the outside, as if growing a garden of metal blooms transformed into the simplicity of formally controlled stems and cantilevered spikes.  Their relationship, both within the unity of the whole and outside, is further established through the interaction of shapes and shadows, and positive and negative spaces.  As American sculptor Robert Morris wrote about the interest in today’s way of looking at the interrelations between an object and the space it inhabits: “Simplicity of space does not necessarily equate with simplicity of experience…”[ii]  Although the shapes in John Henry’s works may appear as simple elements arranged like pick-up-sticks, there is no doubt that the concepts that drive his constructions are complex, and the visual experience enhanced by their energy. 

Carol Damian

Miami, 2013

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Several years ago I recall reading an art review in a formidable New York daily that pronounced – “Making sculpture can be anything an artist makes or puts in three-dimensional space.”  I have never forgotten this pretentious post-Duchampian statement, not because I agreed with it – but quite the contrary. My first response was to inquire: How far have we moved from our ability to think and feel the presence of sculpture?  Do we really believe the process and intelligence involved in making sculpture requires little more than how we place the material?  Extant rumors at the time suggested that culture was being “dumbed down” by the popular media.  But how far from art has this egregious process taken us?  And where is sculpture today?

When it comes to form in three-dimensions, Barrios is right on time. He heralds the coming of a sensitive doubt in which the revival of thinking and feeling will coordinate in the process of making sculpture, a dictum also shared by the late Minimal sculptor Donald Judd. In the case of Barrios, his optical geometry – or “virtual volumes” as noted by Venezuelan artist, Jesus Rafael Soto – has brought poetry back into art. His sculptures resonate with masterful cinematic effect as recently shown on Park Avenue in New York. They vibrate, sparkle, and sing.  As one’s optical gaze follows from one to another, the poetry within the sculptural forms of Barrios truly resonates. Let’s examine ho this happens with a few works from the current exhibition.

An early work, titled Vertical Dislocado, from 1983 – the earliest work in this exhibition – is structurally related to the Curvas.  Although rectilinear – not curved – Vertical Dislocado the elements optically function as if in a state of floatation.  The material is stained wood, which gives the presence of the work more weight, but not entirely. The placement of the wood forms allows a certain illusionist façade given to movement. This is why Barrios is understood as an optical kinetic sculptor. The concept of the form and the movement are equal in illusion. They are both present and absent at the same time. This is the unfathomable mystery behind his work.
While Barrios refers to his work is unfathomable – meaning difficult or impossible to fathom or understand – there is also a mystical quality that is far more elusive. Mysticism explores the unknown, and this is precisely what the art of Barrios suggests. His sculpture is made from materials, yet suggests the immaterial. In the early twentieth century, artists like Mondrian and Kandinsky were interested in the art of the spiritual; but it was, in actuality, a kind of mysticism that absorbed them. And so with Barrios, the ineluctable aspect of his art is always the most important and satisfying part of what he does. As the Russian linguist Roman Jacobson used to proclaim,
it is easier to decipher the signs and symbols in a work of art than to finally acknowledge the ultimate mystery behind the work. This would seem to be the way Rafael Barrios intends his work to be seen, felt, and understood.

Robert C. Morgan

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Dr. Robert C. Morgan is the recipient of the Premiere Arcale award in Salamanca for international art criticism, and a member of the European Academy of Sciences and Arts in Salzburg. He lives and works in New York City where he teaches at the School of Visual Arts.

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Rafael Barrios UNFATHOMABLE

Murals, tapestries, sculptures in wood and steel, and mobiles

Presentation and Book Signing of “The Park Avenue Project” Book

“The Park Ave. Project”
With an essay by art historian, art critic and curator
Robert C. Morgan

Thursday November  29, 7 – 10

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ECLECTIC NETWORK MAGAZINE – Alberto Cavalieri Solo Exhibition at Art Nouveau

Eclectic Network Magazine is WHATSUPMIAMI WUM sister blog for all things eclectic where you can find the most interesting art projects and private events, exhibitions, opening receptions related to multicultural happenings that take place in any of America’s Alpha-World cities.

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The Miami Herald

Huffingtong Post

Gothmist

Blouin Art Info

Washington Post

Washington Post

Kansas City Star

Newday

Haute Living

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 imagren

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Wynwood Arts District
348 NW 29th St.
Miami, FL 33127
305 573 4661

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The Fund for Park Avenue Project
The Fund of Park Avenue, The Park Avenue Malls and the City of New York Department of Parks & Recreation, provide a unique opportunity to present sculptures to the public on New York City’s upper eastside. For this spring they have chosen Venezuela sculptor Rafael Barrios to show his monumental work. The installation will start the night of March 2nd.

Located between the area of 51st and 67th streets, from the Waldorf Astoria to The Armory Building, the ten large scale sculptures will be installed previous to the opening of the art fair The Armory Show (March 8 – 12 Pier 92).

Since 2000, well known artists have been selected for the temporary exhibits, among them: Will Ryman, Robert Indiana, Manolo Valdes, Tom Otterness. Louise Nevelson, Yoshitomo Nara (2010) and Fernando Botero. More info about this project at www.fundforparkavenue.org.

Rafael Barrios (1947 – )
Rafael Barrios was born in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, and raised in Venezuela. He lives between Miami, Paris and Caracas. During an artistic career of almost 40 years, Barrios has participated in over 100 solo and group exhibitions in some of the most important art centers in the United States, Europe, Latin America and the Middle East. His distinctive works are found in prominent museum and institutional collections such, as the Art Gallery of Ontario in Toronto; the Sofía Imber Contemporary Art Museum and the Galeria de Arte Nacional, both in Caracas, Venezuela. His sculptures are also found in important private collections such as Gustavo and Patricia Cisneros, King Juan Carlos of Spain and Princess Gloria von Thurn und Taxis of Germany.

Barrios’ diverse work includes the creation of large-scale sculptures, many destined for public spaces. He models virtual volume to monumental dimensions in these urban contexts, transforming and magnifying forms in space into a new visual experience. He has received numerous commissions for works to be integrated into important urban spaces such as Coca-Cola International Headquarters in New York; Philippe Stark’s Murano Grande building and the Sunny Isles Park in Miami, Florida; Fontanilla Park in Palos de la Frontera, Spain; the Universidad de los Andes, Merida, Venezuela; the headquarters of Procter & Gamble, CorpBanca, Banco Mercantil and the Instituto de Estudios Avanzados, Universidad Simon Bolivar, all in Caracas, Venezuela.

Artist Statement
Rafael Barrios’ work has been characterized from the beginning by the alteration of the observer’s perceptive mental state, manipulating form with the intention of dislocating our convictions about what we believe we see. Barrios creates a territory where the laws of gravity seem not to exist, one in which objects rise freely over each other; where volume appears balanced in space. In doing so, he confounds our normative beliefs about what is possible and questions our ties to that which is terrestrial.

Barrios has been recognized as one of the most innovative contemporary Latin American artists. Since the 1970’s he has continued to perfect his unique concept of Virtualism, a movement that he describes as “the creation of visually participative pieces by the creation of dislocating events in our perception. Volume is virtually modeled and modified in form, depending on distance, shifting with the position of the observer and the changes in light throughout the day.

Location
The 10 sculptures will be installed between 51st Street (corner of the Waldorf Astoria Hotel) and 67th St. (corner of The Armory.) A special vernissage will be held at The Armory Show in New York (March 8 – 12, 2012). Robert C. Morgan, internationally renowned critic, curator, artist, writer, art historian, poet, and lecturer critic, is writing an essay about Rafael Barrios’ career for a book to be launched this spring.

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