Review by Frank Cebulski, contributing editor to Artweek magazine

Works by three local artists at the Sonoma museum of Visual Art confirm the diversity and eclecticism of contemporary art, from traditional and formal works as objects for our observation, to art as an interactive installation of converted everyday experiences, to political and conceptual art that offers no objects to view, but asks for our devoted participation. On view are fifteen impressive recent sculptures by Kurt Steger, an installation by Indigo Som titled, Supply, and a conceptional work by Lowell Darling, titled CRF-11, which makes available to the viewer all the forms, documents and legal instructions necessary to run for president of the United States.

Som has turned the foyer of the gallery into a pseudo_production shop,office hallway, or congested office area, based on her experience as an office worker. The most successful pieces in this installation are stacks of 8-1/2-by-11-inch paper along one wall and a tall stack reaching nearly to the ceiling. She also uses post-it notes and yellow sticky paper and tags along the walls of the foyer in an attempt to turn the space into a diagramed sentence.

Darling had planned his conceptual piece long before the election mess in Florida, so his work turns out to be highly topical. The large number of forms and notebooks of instructions and legal information, although providing the actual means to run for president, really have theinhibiting effect that filling out tax forms or other governmental contracts and requisitions produce. It makes the job seem so abhorrent at the outset, even before filling out the application,that you want to look for a lawyer or an accountant.

Steger's sculptures occupy the main gallery space and are by far the most interesting and engaging work in this exhibition. He categorizes his new mixed- media sculptures into two groups: those that are derived from a sense of "tension" of line, wire and string, and those based upon airplane wings covered with stretched paper and wax. Steger's craftsmanship and woodworking skills are phenomenal, and all of the pieces have the highly crafted and formal quality of finely made furniture and cabinetry. These woodworking skills go hand in hand with early model building, for the sculptures shaped like airplane wings, like Little Wing, and Wing and Vigorous Pod, have struts and forms overlaid with stretched paper and fiber that are reminiscent of model air-planes made of balsa. The sculptures derived from tension take shapes that look like musical instruments, like Ogatha, or Navigator, which looks like a primitive quadrant or fantastical astrolabe.

Two of my favorite pieces in this exhibition are Turning point and Mutual Fate. Turning Point is an eight-foot tall standing structure that at first glance appears to be an African shield mounted on a black stump. But on closer examination the upper form turns out to be a highly stylized but accurate three-demensional representation of a vulva and anus, with a brightly painted red oval at the top that looks like a lacerated clitoris. This work than becomes a statement about primitive initiation rites requiring body mutilation. Below this red area, Steger has used string to lace up the top of the vulva, like a suture. From this perspective, the large black base then becomes a black ominous phallus. The whole sculpture works in surprising formal harmony for such a "loaded" gruesome subject. The tension in this piece lies between the formalized elements of the elegant shapes, their richly textured painted surfaces and the brutal knowledge of what it really represents.

Mutual Fate uses a truncated wing shape as a basic starting point. This shape is pierced by five rectangular compartments, like miniature rooms or windows traversing the wing. In each compartment hangs a blue bundle,tied with string, like an onion or garlic cluster, each pendant giving definition to its space and place. The overall impression created is of a small boat or of an ideal, de-animalized Noah's ark. Steger succeeds in giving his sculptures that essential timeless quality that accompanies the pleasure and serenity of geometry and form. The textures of his sculptures are so tactile and obsessively rendered that it is nearly impossible not to reach out and stroke them.

Artweek

March 2001