Not-so-still-life: in his recent work, Andrew Lord continues to address issues of painting through the medium of clay, as well as to shape his sculptures by unorthodox methods

In Kasmin's nearby auxiliary space were nine drawings and two individual ceramic forms, dated 1993-2004. The sculptures, which were among the earliest works in the show, are related by their base forms. Sleeping head might recall Brancusi's muse, but a cone flares out from above and behind the left ear--or perhaps bores into the reclining head. The face is barely defined. You sense that the mouth is a little open. There is no real neck or jaw contour, and the surface, like that of the pots in the main gallery, is finger-raked. The other, Skull, again goes rounded and general in back, where the artist has not bothered to suggest a neck. This head is embellished with a large, ropy handle that curls resiliently, like a pig's tail. Rising from the skull is a vase with a strange rim that could be read as a yawning maw.

A graphite-on-Indian-paper drawing from 1993 also titled Skull has slightly different implications: the skull is the same, but the lip of the vase has the profile of a heart (somewhere between conventionalized and anatomical), and the looping handle looks like entrails. Among other drawings are four individual pots outlined in red conte on Somerset cream paper, in each of which the line is not flowing but halting. It's as if Lord drew in pulse increments. Here he has added to this trembling motion and to the leaning posture so common among the pots, an aura composed of conte fingerprints and smudges. Two drawings on black paper are like ghostly recollections of pots, while the most conventional depiction of the bunch, a 2004 drawing of a coffee pot that is tall but not so distorted in form, is disturbed by three distinct "brandings" with ear shapes.

Lord's drawn line equates to the scratched, interrupted skin of his ceramics. The emotional tenor he achieves in all of these pieces may be the single most memorable quality of his work. The skulls are only casually morbid, like Mexican Day of the Dead imagery, but in any case Lord's idiosyncratic, intransigent forms--classical yet inventive, abstract yet figural--are strikingly alive.

"Andrew Lord: Sculpture and Related Drawings" was shown at Paul Kasmin Gallery, New York [Sept. 10-Oct. 9, 2004]. It was accompanied by a catalogue with essays by Agnes Gund and Janet Kraynak.

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