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Willard Boepple at Salander-O'Reilly
Art in America, Dec, 2004 by Karen Wilkin
Since the mid-1980s, sculptor Willard Boepple has been exploring the implications of human physicality, not by making images of the figure but by building three-dimensional metaphors for things we use or places we inhabit. His starting point was the way the proportions of familiar objects--such as the spacing of ladder rungs--are determined by the proportions of the body. Boepple's first statements of the theme were vertical, ladderlike structures made of wood or metal, slender or thickset, left bare or loaded with slabs and turned forms. The wall-mounted "bookshelves" that followed, beginning in 1995, were, like the "ladders," compelling as inventive riffs on the tradition of constructed sculpture, scaled to the hand. Their mysterious compartments and aggressive projections also made us reconsider such everyday actions as placing things on a shelf or manipulating handles.
Boepple shifted his attention from domestic objects to architecture about four years ago, with a group of large-scale, schematic enclosures that could be entered but remained abstract and nonliteral. One of these, Room (2000) dominated his recent exhibition at Salander-O'Reilly. A gleaming aluminum framework defined a cube of space, which, because of its four-square clarity and elegantly outlined roof gable, simultaneously conjured up Classical temples and the most ordinary sheds. Those contradictory associations were subverted by horizontal planes of various thicknesses inserted at unpredictable intervals in the framework. Their illogical placement kept them from being read as utilitarian shelving and returned us, instead, to the realm of the self-sufficient, the nonfunctional and the allusive. The legacy of Cubist construction, along with Mondrian (made three-dimensional), were equally present in this ambiguous structure, although finally, the transparent but eye-catching Room is a meditation on the differences between interior and exterior, even on the meaning of shelter itself.
Three pedestal-mounted Temples (2003), made of painted poplar, further abstracted these concerns, compacting the enterable space of Room into dense, introspective cubes, as opaque as Room is transparent. From some views, the Temples were all impenetrable facade. From others, they were economical assemblies of thick, shifting planes--chunky deconstructed boxes that threatened to fold up into solid masses, their "outwardness" emphasized by matte, dark (or in one instance, dull red) surfaces. Yet from other vantage points, the Temples were--barely--permeable. Narrow slots of light became metaphors for passage and penetration, reminding us once again of the difference between protection and exposure. The unseen interiors of these enigmatic objects were highly charged. Were they sacred precincts or magic boxes? Maybe both. The Temples, like Room, are thought-provoking, original, intelligent and unforgettable.
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COPYRIGHT 2004 Gale Group
