Pierre Vadi | Delta | Marlo Pascual | The New York Times | The New York Times
Jan 30 2009
Two solo projects take a fashionably contingent approach to sculptural installation.
Pierre Vadi’s “Delta,” said to be inspired by lunar landscapes, makes full use of the long main gallery at the Swiss Institute. A structure of four wooden beams extending diagonally from a point on the floor frames a scattering of small multiples: melted or crumpled sheets of clear acrylic; blue resin casts of bell peppers; oversize screws and bolts laid out in parallel clusters. Mr. Vadi offers few clues to the relationships between these objects, but it’s clear that two definitions of sculpture are in collision: Mark di Suvero meets Allan McCollum.
Marlo Pascual’s installation achieves greater coherence. (It probably helps that she has the smaller project gallery.) Enlarged prints of vintage black-and-white photographs — a yearbook-style portrait, a still life of potted plants, a shot of a chicken — become a kind of stage set with the addition of a lamp, some cacti and judiciously placed sheets of plywood. Color is kept to a minimum, blurring real and photographic space. The strategy is familiar, but executed with aplomb.
– Karen Rosenberg