Vincent Fecteau’s work from the late 1990s consisted of wonderful small assemblages combining foam core and collages cut out of catalogs and interior-design magazines. In the two decades since, his sculptures have shed their pictorial skins for paint, becoming abstract arrangements of curved and rectilinear forms, suggesting a cross between Giacometti and Giotto.
His latest exhibition includes new abstract reliefs carved from resin, but also recent collages on foam core that recall his earlier efforts. The pairing of these bodies of work reveals their previously hidden affinities. First the collages: The untitled gem that combines a piece of real clothesline with pictures of carpeted stairs, a bedroom and what appears to be part of a stone fireplace has heft enough to hold a lot of the wall, even though it’s no more than 15 inches long. The somewhat larger sculptures, which resemble vortices, pull off a similar feat. Less architectonic than Baroque, they recall the interior of an ear, or drapery folds.
They’re painted in quiet colors (the gray-blues, greenish grays, pale terra-cottas and off-whites of hotel lobbies and corporate offices), while the collages incorporate elements such as a twist of ribbon or a picture of fabric hung as a swag—forms echoed in the reliefs. As the show makes clear, Fecteau’s abstractions evoke images, while his collages are haunted by the visual and existential abstractions of everyday life.—Anne Doran