Immi Storrs at Spanierman Gallery

Joel Shapiro Marino Marini Auguste Rodin Singapore Businessman Sues Art Gallery Over "Thinker" Grand Scale Couples Kiss and Make Art at Chicago Museum California Museums Band Together to Buy Mabry Work The Old Guard

Send a letter to the Editor

Save to Del.icio.us Digg this

New York's Spanierman Gallery today opens "Two Decades of Sculpture by Immi C. Storrs" through April 30. The exhibition shows sculptures of animals and figures that the New York-based artist has created over the course of more than 20 years.

Storrs works within the modernist tradition of English sculptors Henry Moore and Elisabeth Frink, the French sculptor Germaine Richier, and post-war Italian artist Marino Marini, in her concern for arriving at the essences of the appearance and character of her subjects.

In her single figures, pairs, and multiple groupings we feel a sense of the familiar, regardless of the degree to which she generalizes, exaggerates, eliminates unnecessary elements, and enhances the anatomical features of her forms. In Small Smooth Horse (1992), the shiny coat of a horse is conveyed through the beautiful patina, while a fundamental feeling of ease is suggested in the grazing horses of Six Horses Column.

Created in 1985, Dead Bird, modeled in clay and cast in bronze, was Storrss first animal sculpture. Poignant without being sentimental, this work is startlingly direct in its representation of final rest. Embodying classical notions of death as still life or life stilled, this work belongs to a rich sculptural tradition extending from the academy to the current conceptual trend that embraces French eighteenth-century sculptor Jean-Antoine Houdon and the English contemporary sculptor Damien Hirst.

Since that time, Storrs has consistently re-evaluated sculptural traditions and conventions, as may be seen in Bird on Nest and Young Crow, which demonstrate her interest in a dynamic engagement of forms.

In Bird on Nest, the taut and rippling ridges and planes of the raptorial bird perched on a nest-like base showcase the strengths of her powerful modeling skills. The one-wing up, head-down pose in this sculpture suggests a synthesis of flight and landing, bringing to mind the way that Auguste Rodin discussed the idea of movement in sculptural composition, as a means of evoking transitions from one moment or activity to another. Storrss vigorous handling of clay is demonstrated in the awesome energy and presence manifested in Young Crow.

Like the post-minimalist artist Joel Shapiro, Storrs is interested in combining bronze and wood, and in her mixed media sculpture, Large Goat with Wooden Legs (2003), she employs one material for the body and another for the legs, challenging the usual expectations that the body or figure in representational sculpture be consistent in their materials. The relationship between the base and stand in a sculpture are themes she investigates in Fence Post Series, in which the heads of a horse, goat, bull, and sheep are presented atop posts. The result is an intriguingly conceptual work that evokes multiple references, from the American western range to ancient Roman and European Baroque and eighteenth-century portrait busts.

Storrss animal boxes, such as Bull Box I (1989) and Bull Box II (1990), demonstrate how she relates her interpretation of this iconic structure to the animals it will hold. In these works, the bullpen, landscape, and the outdoors have emblematic connotations, as they are presented as universal and personal containers that open, close, and surprise, their thematic concerns linking her art to the boxes in the works of Joseph Cornell, Louise Nevelson, and Lucas Samaras.

In her recent sculptures, Storrs returns to the study of the human form that was her focus in the 1980s. Among her latest sculptures, Man with Bird and Woman (2005), evokes the comment of the noted English painter Francis Bacon that the artists job is to deepen the mystery. Is the man, by having the bird on his left shoulder, getting more in touch with his instinct? Is the pose of the woman, standing with both feet on the ground, an assertion of her independence?

Storrs, who lives in New York City and Southampton, attended Colorado Womens College, Denver, and the University of Denver. With the exception of study with Sidney Simon, she is mainly self-taught. She has exhibited in solo and group shows throughout the United States. Her work was included in the prestigious survey of twentieth-century American sculpture held at The White House, Washington, D.C., in 1997, and she is represented in the collections of the Herbert Johnson Museum, Cornell University, Ithaca, New York; the National Museum for Women in the Arts, Washington, D.C.; the Snite Museum, University of Notre Dame, South Bend, Indiana; and the National Academy Museum, New York, where she also serves as council member.