This is an object that shouldn't have body language, but does. And if we talk about body language, then this is a quick transition to personality. Those who grew up with The Moomins of Tove Jansson can see in the “I” the shadow of the cold and lonely Groke, wandering through life with the same vague, not quite shoulders, with the same feeling of being cut off from the world. That's right: the large prop in “Leverage No. 1” (1988-89) is called a tool, but clearly alludes to a wagging tail. The knee-high cast iron sculpture, composed of three ovoids, is instantly recognizable as a predator perched on a rock, simultaneously evoking stillness and incipient movement. (Puryear is also an accomplished falconer.)
Puryear never really fit in. For sixty years, his work and career proceeded in quiet disregard of dogmas about how important art should look, behave, or be created. In an era that values outsourced manufacturing, he has always preferred to do things by hand. He worked in the Peace Corps in Sierra Leone and studied printmaking at the Royal Swedish Academy of Arts for two years to learn from local carpenters, tool makers and furniture makers. When it was considered weak to allow viewers to be distracted by the silent material presence of an abstract object, Pourier made room for allusion. (Eight-foot inverted funnel “Nobless O.”, 1987, Maybe seen as pure form, but it would be foolish to deny its resemblance to the Tin Man's hat.) It is as if, sometime in the sixties, Puryear looked back at the bits of human experience excluded from high art and decided to invite them all in.
The exhibition's title is a tribute to this openness and complexity, to the way in any of Puryear's work there are multiple threads to follow – the sheer beauty of his forms and materials; the ingenuity of his carpentry; similarities and references to nature, history and the black artist's thoughts on blackness and whiteness. Everything connects. “Nexus” is also the name of a 1979 product: a large, not-quite-round cedar hoop that flares out slightly where two ends meet, one painted black and the other white. In an engraving commemorating Puryear's student days in Stockholm, he is already rehearsing the shape of a hill that would later be repeated in many variations, here composed of four lumpy blocks – three with blotches of beige and one with black ink – and called “Quadroon”. In the catalogue, curator Emily Liebert tells the story of Puryear's encounter as a child with John James Audubon's portraits of two gyrfalcons, one white and one black, which evolved from adaptation to their environment. “I made connections between the racial differences of people through these species,” Puryear said.
Growing up, Puryear aspired to become a wildlife illustrator; In college, he planned to pursue a degree in biology before pursuing art. Nature, its surfaces and internal logic are constantly present throughout the show. Wall labels indicate the wood used—Alaskan yellow cedar, Swiss pear, lignum vitae—as a respected staff member might call it. At a deeper level, the natural mechanism of repetition and mutation also belongs to Puryear. In sculptures, drawings and engravings one can observe how the peculiar hump of the “Quadroon” straightens out, turning into “I”, then stretches into something resembling a squatting bear, then elongates into something like a preening bird. In the twenties, it swelled and took on the characteristic shape of the Phrygian cap, a sartorial symbol of freedom during the American and French revolutions.
“The Way”, 2022.Artwork by Martin Puryear / Courtesy of the artist and Matthew Marks Gallery.
