You’ve got to take the rough with the smooth in life, or if you’re American artist Barbara Chase-Riboud, the hard with the soft. For decades, the sculptor has been combining towering mounds of rigid metal with flowing knots of fabric and rope. A constant contrast of densities.
She moved from the US to the EUrope in the 1950s and lost herself in the world of modernism, rubbing shoulders with Alexander Calder, Max Ernst, Lee Miller and, most importantly, the sculptor Alberto Giacometti. The Swiss giant’s influence on her early works here is enormous. But where his figures loom and lope, Chase-Riboud’s splay and melt.
They’re nice enough works, but it took time – and alot more travel – for her to find her own voice, and when she did, she stuck with it. Most of the sculptures here are made of pleated sheets of folded bronze or aluminium, combined with long, thick strands of thread. The metal creases in on itself like a crumpled, damaged machine, the fabric twists into neat plaits and ropes.
The metal feels modern, industrial, the rope feels human, ancient
The metal feels modern, industrial, the rope feels human, ancient, but also filled with allusions to clothing, barriers, nooses, dreadlocks. There are works inspired by ancient Egypt and China, others are monuments to cultural figures like Malcolm X. But despite the variety of subject matter, the whole thing gets pretty damn repetitive, just the same thing over and over. If the aesthetic doesn’t immediately appeal to you, you’re not going to feel much different by the end.
But more than anything, this just feels like a show of twentieth century sculpture, plain and simple, and that’s a good thing. Chase-Riboud has insinuated herself – a Black woman making art about injustice and freedom – into the almost entirely white tradition of modern European sculpture. Not only does she not look out of place, she looks like she belongs.
