Philip Pavia at Broome Street - New York - Brief Article

This exhibition focused on two groups of recent medium-size, abstract works by veteran New York sculptor Philip Pavia. Six "Freefall Temple" pieces featured carefully arranged marble blocks. Four "Freefall Image" sculptures were made of connected bronze rods with mottled surfaces and polished highlights. None taller than 3 feet, the sculptures were installed on low pedestals and interspersed in two rows in the long gallery space. Overall, the show proved the continuing vitality of an artist whose long and distinguished career began in the early 1940s. Between 1948 and '55, Pavia ran The Club, a weekly meeting of artists dedicated to discussion and debate. He later published It Is, a journal of artists' writings.

In the "Freefall Temple" group, the black or white stone blocks range from 1 to 2 feet long and around 3 inches thick. The black Belgian marble has a slick, oily surface that contrasts with the more granular raw Carrara white. Three of these works also incorporate a hefty colored stone of either red, green or tan. Freefall Temple #1 features several irregular white blocks and a black wedge shape that leans, buttresslike, against one of the white blocks; these support a towering black stone. The structure resembles a spire and roof. In this piece, as well as others in the series, architectural references appear and vanish with a contradictory and ambiguous fluidity. In Freefall Temple #4, a colonnade of white and black blocks supports a billowing mass of striated Turkish onyx. It conjures a classical portico surmounted by a tan cloud.

The quiet repose of the "Temple" series contrasts with the contained exuberance of the bronzes, in which negative space and open structure replace dense compression. Each bronze constitutes a sort of drawing in space, as much through its rugged surface energy as its linear composition. Bronze bars cast from accumulated applications of wax, variously smoothed or gnarled, have surfaces that are shiny gold with dark reddish recesses. In Freefall Image #1, three vertical elements, roughly parallel, are connected by crossbars. The center rod bifurcates at the top, and one branch joins the adjacent vertical. In this stark piece, the artist articulates a passage of energy through the subtle torque of the skeletal structure. A high point in Pavia's 60-plus years of engagement with Abstract Expressionism, this wonderful show reflected a refined sensibility and a rough-hewn grace.

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