22 Jul 2010

Hal Buckner: SHAPES AND SHADOWS at Berlin Art Projects

SOLO EXHIBITION: HAL BUCKNER | SHAPES AND SHADOWS
July – August 2010

Berlin Art Projects | Showroom | Unter den Linden 40 | D – 10117 Berlin

Opening | Friday | 23 July | 7:00 – 9:00 pm

Berlin Art Projects proudly presents 'Shapes and Shadows,' the European debut solo exhibition by American sculptor Hal Buckner. We cordially invite you to join us for the opening on Friday July 23, 2010 from 7 to 9pm, in our Showroom space at Unter den Linden 40.

Seated at the heart of Buckner's work is a fascination with line and light; his creations draw inspiration from world-famous artworks, mass media and pop culture. Crafted from light aluminum sheeting – polished to a shine, matte or deep black – he draws and creates forms, simple contours molded into clearly recognizable motifs.

Sculptures that behave like drawings – at first glance, the viewer is completely taken in by the elegance of the line that Hal Buckner uses to tenderly depict the female form. The work shows the artist's versatility, and his ability to create using only a gestural figure, space and perspective. At the moment the viewer is confronted with the work, the female body suddenly appears out of nothing, rendered only as a powerful line. His contours remain open, incomplete and doubled by the play with light and shadow. Icons of art history are dispossessed of their content and drawn in as a sketch. Buckner plays with the viewer's knowledge and ability to recognize the images by reducing well-known masterpieces by Leonardo, Michelangelo and Botticelli to the brink of near unrecognizeability.

A second glance at the work betrays what the perfectly-cut forms are concealing. On an empty wall, Buckner's work has the look of the written word as its meaning dissolves, revealing the stark nakedness of white. The figures are an ephemeral delimitation of emptiness, tiny battles against the unformed. Interior and exterior are divided only by the contours of a body, and yet they are all of the same material. Buckner expresses himself with the line, and yet what actually forms the work is the fleeting, the unsaid, the space of the viewer. The artist's work lives in his filling these forms and silhouettes with his knowledge and imagination.

Hal Buckner (* 1938 in Whidbey Island, Washington) | 1964 – 1971 studied painting and sculpture at the University of Seattle, Washington and Oregon under Larry Rivers among others. | 1986 – 1995 taught at the following US universities: Southwestern Oregon Community College, Oregon; Long Island University, New York; Marywood College, Pennsylvania; Keystone Junior College, Pennsylvania | Professor Emeritus at Pierce College, Washington | lives and works in Southampton, New York.