Southampton Arts Center: Contemporary Outdoor Sculpture — ‘Organic Abstraction’

With an emphasis on syntax and form rather than subject matter, the handling of material and the artists’ processes become the subject of the work; each piece is most immediately identified and appreciated by its most basic physical attributes.

Artwork that is seemingly void of narrative (or abstract) has historically been celebrated as the purest form of art, as noted by critics such as Clement Greenberg and others. Material, shape, form, composition and surface engender an unadulterated or “pure” aesthetic experience.

Within this idiom, notions of nature connect and inspire each work by virtue of material, form, or concept.

(Norman Mooney, “Bloom No. 4”)

John Van Alstine’s “Sisyphean Circle” unites industrial metal objects with natural river stone, marrying the two literally and metaphorically. Nature’s heavy stone is suspended and appears weightless at the helm of his clever and skillful assemblage process.

Kevin Barrett’s “Embrace” fuses organic shapes and rhythms rooted in both the human form and landscape with impeccable grace and welding technique.

These concepts are underscored by the natural essence of outdoor atmosphere where the synergy between nature, art, and spectator is both continuous and evolving; time of day, scale, perspective, light, color of the sky, movement of clouds, and the artworks’ proximity to trees and to each other are all vital to the viewers’ sense of place, space, and discovery.

(Kevin Barrett, “Embrace”)