July 25, 1999, Sunday
Westchester Weekly Desk
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ART; Outdoor Sculpture With a Festive Air
By WILLIAM ZIMMER
On the route from the entrance of Purchase College to the Neuberger
Museum of Art on the college's campus here, a visitor to the ''1999
Biennial Exhibition of Public Art'' is greeted first by a field of roses
and then by tinkling bells. It is hard to imagine any beginning more
festive. The viewers' good mood will be sustained: the 17 sculptures
sited on the grounds are diverse and smart in their own way.
Most of the artists come from New York City but many parts of the
country are represented. Dennis Oppenheim's choice of a stretch of
grass is an obvious one for the faithfully rendered but outsize
fiberglass roses painted a variety of lipstick colors. Sometimes Mr.
Oppenheim, is mischievous, but here he is simply dazzling. Bill and
Mary Buchen are responsible for the bells, which are no bigger than
motes dangling from the bobbing crosspieces of five streamlined steel
shafts. The bells are hardly noticed, but their sound does much to
humanize the austerity of the Buchens's construction.
Hugging the museum facade is ''Family of Five'' by Jim Roche. If it
were stripped of its wealth of hardware like metal signs, tools and
hubcaps, it might be a five-paneled screen. As it is, Mr. Roche has
arranged his evocative elements symmetrically, so that each side of
the work has a mask-like face. Kenneth Snelson's bunched aggregate of
stainless steel pipes is the centerpiece in the museum's courtyard.
In back of the museum is a bucolic tract of grass and trees. The
place has a history: it was a homestead in the 17th and 18th
centuries, and archeology classes at the college find it a rich dig.
Susan Crowder pays homage to this past in the faithful kitchen garden
that she has sown.
A blocky, figurative sculpture by Kenta Fushara recalls his
childhood, and a small boy stands among the nexus of fiberglass
figures. A snake weaves through the crowd, and surely symbolizes a
loss of innocence. Lynda Benglis's tall, scaly bronze work might be an
abstraction of a running figure. Mary Miss saw the potential of a
massive dark purple beech tree on the edge of the field. She built a
hefty 132-foot ladder, which remains parallel to the ground but leads
the eye toward the tree. This exhilarating perspectival rush heightens
the splendor of the tree.
''Ascension'' is what Tim Curtis calls his work, in which a
missile-like form hangs over a rock-lined, boat-shaped cut in the
earth. It is probably the only deliberately mysterious piece in the
show.
John Monti and Michael Bramwell flipped a coin over who would get
an enclosure with a low stone wall and small, shallow concrete basin.
The result was the correct one. For ''Lemon Float,'' Monti painted the
interior of the basin bright blue, so that it resembles a swimming
pool. Flanking it are two Oldenburg-like lemons of fiberglass and
rubber, which viewers, with some effort, can roll around. The totality
is a burst of summer in a dark glade. It helps to know that Mr.
Bramwell, who chose a spot adjacent to the one he coveted, is known
for conceptual pieces in which he sweeps out historic places. He has
evidently taken a broom to the three large squares of ceramic floor
tile. Since the work is called ''Three Squares (for the Boys on Rikers
Island),'' soaring over the squares is a clothesline on which many
pairs of sneakers hang.
Some of the artists were spurred by the desolate classroom building
area of the college campus. In an open plaza, Buster Simpson installed
a working grindstone with the words ''hone'' and ''wear'' inscribed on
either side of the sandstone wheel. The relevance of this piece to the
educational process is obvious. On a stark building facade, Jackie
Chang installed a mock awning like those that hang over the entrances
to neighborhood stores. It has five components whose writing
advertises made-up enterprises with an idealistic bent. One of the
stores is Brave New World Video; another is Utopia Barbecue.
Covering a light steel framework with a lightweight nylon wind
screen, colored the appropriate shade of dark green, Lee Boroson
created a mock hedgerow, configured like a maze. The artificiality of
his materials mocks the sterility of this side of the campus.
''Hedge'' is installed on a long, bare plaza. At the very least,
having to negotiate Mr. Boroson's labyrinth will add a bit of variety
to one's usual route across campus.
Jun Kaneko chose to beautify the place by creating a hefty ceramic
sculpture, which apparently has no seams, leading to the conclusion
that it was fired in one piece. A colorfully patchwork surface of
parallel lines, running horizontally, vertically and diagonally, it
relates to the brickwork of the college buildings, but it also shows
in stern angularity how to have a good time.
To that end, Siah Armajani provides a long picnic table with an
outsize wheel hooked to one side of it. Meanwhile, in a nearby
forested area, which resembles a pavilion because of the high trees
that admit light, is a lectern on which Mara Scrupe has written a
rather cryptic poem about mankind's alienation from nature. At night
the lectern is lighted by a solar unit, standing in the open some
distance away, and the message shines, proving that this artist is
able to practice the reconciliation she preaches.
The ''1999 Biennial Exhibition of Public Art'' is at the Neuberger Museum
of Art through Oct. 24. The number to call for information is 251-6100.
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