March 13, 2004
Alan Saret at James Cohan Gallery
Here is an Artforum.com review of the Alan Saret exhibition now on view at James Cohan Gallery. The link dies in two months, so here is the full text:
This significant selection of Alan Saret's wire sculptures and colored-pencil drawings from the late '60s through the mid-'80s displays the artist's focus on form and process. Pushing out from the wall, hanging from the ceiling, and balanced on the floor, Saret's variously scaled sculptures—made from precise tangles of nickel, steel, and copper wire, both coated and uncoated and prone to shifting over time—are simultaneously wispy and clotted, their volume dissolving into the airy voids between lines drawn in space. The 2-D works, rainbow-hued clusters of marks set adrift on large expanses of graph paper, are not studies but a parallel practice, and they re-create this paradoxical impression of density pulled from immateriality. Be sure to read the titles, as many (like Planetary Vertical Ensoulment, 1970) hint at the spiritual realm Saret aspired to and often depicted in other works—a dimension that is otherwise missing from this show. Saret deserves the attention given to other post-Minimal artists; let's hope the recuperative process encouraged here is not just momentary.
I highly recommend this show. I was familiar with Saret's sculptures, but had never before seen the drawings, which are revelatory in their beauty. See especially the two horizontally-oriented works on graph paper hung one over the other in the front room and, if they're still there, the two drawings in the viewing room at the back of the gallery.