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Jon Rajkovich at Lisa Boyle
Art in America, Feb, 2008 by Mark Staff Brandl
In his second show at Lisa Boyle, Los Angeles sculptor Jon Rajkovich has progressed significantly from his previous, jokey, highly finished works made of bright-hued latex and plastic. Fashionable wit has been supplanted by charming playfulness, while the artist retains his attraction to discrepancy. The seven exhibited sculptures (all 2007) are hodgepodge constructions of sawn, clamped and glued plywood. They are meticulously spackled, sanded, partially primed and then left unfinished, which emphasizes Rajkovich's process of assembly. Long rectangular channels undulate through the pieces, creating the effect of carved, three-dimensional doodles.
The works frequently bear supplementary embellishments: a duck-shaped wicker basket, a hanging potted plant, a lemon, a string of beads. These accessories are vestiges of Rajkovich's earlier appropriationist tendencies (in the Haim Steinbach mode) and are generally unnecessary, although entertaining. His attached objects are best when idiosyncratic, unexpected and thoroughly integrated into the works. The hanging plant in Gilroy Ripple, for example, remains a foreign element in the sculpture, whereas another wall piece contains a rectangular tube painstakingly built around a long tree branch. This is both delightful to discover and significantly suggestive, distilling in one detail Rajkovich's rich merger of careful handicraft and the haphazard.
The most impressive component of the show was a centrally placed floor piece, Lion Paw, which measures 60 by 40 by 24 inches. Propped up on one side by support struts, it appears to be pieced together from sections of unfinished wooden sign lettering. The work is taller in its "hind" section, gently falling off and becoming more horizontal as its looping wooden forms swirl to the front. A found cast-concrete lion's paw, resembling the metal feet on old bathtubs, discreetly supports the rear section.
These sculptures reveal an artist who is genially exploring and personalizing an expressive vocabulary. His fertile blending of found with formal elements and his dialectic of finished and incomplete take his work beyond its irony-laden art-historical sources. Hopefully, Rajkovich will continue on this rewarding path.
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