Redemption Center Rooftop Sculpture Show

      August 10, 2008, a rain swept Sunday marked the opening of the Redemption Center Rooftop Sculpture Show in Prospect Heights, Brooklyn.  Featuring the work of twenty-six artists, the huge multi-tiered industrial roof looks something like an epic dystopian mini-golf course.  The singular requirement for work was “large sculpture only” and nothing is bigger than host/curator Josh Duensing’s “Spider Man.”  Wrapped around two sides of the roof’s central brick elevator shaft the 13ft chicken wire and paper-mache Spidey scales the wall looking lean and mean in his customary red and blue costume.  The visual punch line comes, especially to the delight of some local neighborhood youths, when rounding the corner of the shaft—Spiderman’s hindquarters appear absurdly disproportionate.  With a tiny head, a tiny left arm, and a huge, huge body, Duensing’s “Spider Man” suggests that even the best of us must sometimes carry a heavy load.

            Anais Daly offers an intoxicating (or asphyxiating) psychotic self-portrait made of melted audio and videotapes.  The six foot tall creature with shocked cassette reel eyes rises from the rooftop like the night of the living dead. I wondered if it’s lumpy black exterior represented mankind’s decaying soul or Daly’s lungs after melting all that plastic (she promised she used a respirator…).  The most formally taut piece in the show was Dmitri Hertz’s “Wagon Wheel Barbells.” Combining the feel of 19^th century athletics and late 20^th century minimalism, Hertz’s symmetrical metal and rubber construction embodies old times and new—only the strongest man can lift this one off the ground. Brian Faucette’s sculpture made of wood, brightly colored wigs, and dripping pigments, was the most painterly in the show.  Here, as he has done several times this summer, Faucette proves once again that his unique sensibilities translate in all mediums.   

             Certain sculptures, such as Lindsay Beebe’s mucky roadside memorial, Dan Turner’s silver spray painted truck tires, Erik Lindman’s paint chip installation, and Boris Chesakov’s alphabet clothes line, seemed to have emerged from and remain intrinsically connected to the industrial urban cityscape in which they are situated.  Other pieces, namely Nick Payne’s “Pilgrim Shitter”, and Jennie Ross/Joe Johnson’s hanging hotdog planetarium diorama, stand uniquely in contrast to their surroundings.  Miles Huston, who is known for his concise conceptual experiments, offers an ambiguous architectural structure made of wood, yellow striped domed windows, a hand constructed office chair and some potted plants.  While this object is visually compact, it is conceptually scattered: is it about climate change? Utopian housing? The War in Afghanistan? Can we ever know?

 

            Other notable sculptures include Sean Townley’s proto-Hegalian rock tower, Emilie Waterhouse’s 25ft plant stand, and of course the performance piece by Kate Levant who became a living sculpture by covering her body with hundreds of crawling lady bugs.  

 

 

Dan Heidkamp, 2008