3D: Contemporary Works from the Farnsworth

Sculpture of many forms creates spatial magic on a macro and human scale as visitors weave their way among the three-dimensional mix of work on view in the Crosman Gallery. Ranging from wall-mounted pieces in low relief to mixed media floor installations and from hard-edged to organic structures laden with metaphor, most of the works on view were made over the past four decades and given to the Farnsworth by their makers or by generous collectors. The sculpture is as varied in form and format as the Thrones from Louise Nevelson’s stage set for Gluck’s “Orfeo and Euridice,” performed by the Opera Theater of St. Louis thirty years ago, the wire-wrapped stone geographies of Celeste Roberge, or John Newman’s intricate construction, Fuchsia Unfurls in a Gilded Cage. Pieces in low relief include Leonard Baskin’s classically rendered bronze Owl, embodying the noble as well as the killing instinct, and his Dentate Flower which suggests all the delicacy and horror of skeletal remains. Some works, while immobile, evoke an illusion of movement in space: in particular, several spherical forms such as John Bisbee’s Zero, act as metaphor for completion, containment, cycle, or infinite dance.

The primary media sponsor of the exhibition is Maine Home + Design. The exhibition was funded in part through a grant provided by the Maine Arts Commission, an independent state agency supported by the National Endowment for the Arts