In this rich, dense, and compact show, Mel Kendrick focuses on his generally solid, large, puzzle-like sculptures, most in his current signature tones of yellow and black, creating a dynamic continual exchange with scribbled surface-markings playing in contradistinction to weighty, muscular structures.
Associations and ideas abound. Convoluted shapes evoke such Cubists as sculptor Raymond Duchamp Villon, who carved directly into wood, rendering abstract fragments at once rough, fluid, and dramatic; and Conrad Marca-Relli, who merged painting, collage, and construction, uniting the built and the drawn. Kendrick’s frantic energy is also reminiscent of Futurists such as Boccioni and Severini who worked in both two and three dimensions. Sculpture and drawing likewise intermingle in Kendrick’s work, continually translating the one into the other. The artist’s use of color, specifically deep yellow, calls to mind many different ideas, including warm and inviting Braque still lifes as well as industrial signposts. Triangular yellow shapes, embedded like directionals—or mis-directionals—take viewers out into surrounding spaces. The yellow geometric shapes evoke barriers, caution, borders, and “danger ahead.” It puts me in mind of the ever-engaging reflections of Marjorie Welish in her series of works on paper titled "Indecidability of the Sign: Yellow/Black" (2019–ongoing).
Contradictions entice. The visible construction of the infinitely tangled bodies of most of the works establish motion, where the bases, usually solid blocks of wood, attempt to plant the sculptures firmly in place, claiming their hold on the firmament.
Kendrick makes wood do unnatural things, like leaving it to fold ribbonlike as it drops near to the ground. All of which brings us to the question of where and/or what is the ground. Is it a big block of wood? A hunk of rusted metal? A mound of concrete? And then we think of that modernist problem: what is the function of a base? Does it interfere with our perception or reading of a sculpture the way British base-denier Anthony Caro would have had it? Or does it cubistically maintain a momentum?
Kendrick works with these problems rather than trying to solve them. He lets things happen, leaving his works to chance as he pulls out sections of the sculptures and reassembles them. He seems to be amassing all the tools of modernism today, allowing them to play themselves out, just as he uses and calls back into action the many pieces of his own work that have been rejected or discarded, using them as fragments drawn from his memory bank. Together, these random elements assemble so as to provide a history of the artist’s work mixed with a history of modern movements in the making of sculpture.
In the parlor room of the townhouse gallery, before the white-painted fireplace, there is a sociable gathering of works, very much in conversation with one another, made of similar materials and sharing the surrounding space. An oversize woodblock on Kozo paper mounted on linen hangs elegantly as backdrop here, lending a sense of surprising serenity. Titled Twin Locks (1997), the piece echoes the cluster of sculptures in black and yellow, but gives the viewer a respite from the intensity of the constructed works.
Kendrick investigates both his work and himself physically (cell by cell), showing us how he does it, exposed screw by screw. We can see the cells taking shape in such works as Cell (G) (2013), a piece in cast paper with carbon and black pigment. He is taking and retaking his own measure throughout in a rhythmic display of invention and imagination.
