“STEELY MAMMOTHS
Natural and industrial meld in a sculpture group show. Also: Fred Folsom's neoclassical take on American life and Micheline Klagsbrun's liquefied texts
MARK JENKINS
MAY 6, 2025
Micheline Klagsbrun, “Dream Books” (Courtesy of Studio Gallery)
AMONG THE TOMES SUMMONED BY MICHELINE KLAGSBRUN'S "WRIT ON Water” is libra segundo de Moses, a Spanish title for the book also called Exodus. The volume is an apt inclusion, since many of the local artist's pieces are inspired by her family's flight from the Nazi-controlled regions of Europe. While Klagsbrun's recent shows have featured ships, this one emphasizes texts. Yet the water imagery of her earlier work endures.
Curated by Aneta Georgievska-Shine, the Studio Gallery show includes some ink and colored-pencil drawings on rough paper. But it's dominated by 3D constructions made of paper, ink, string, wire, branches, and bark. Twists of wood that previously represented boats serve here as frames and supports for swirls of smeared, water-shaped paper. These enigmatic objects represent "the instability or memory and identity," according to a gallery note.
Words matter, whether in Hebrew, English, or Spanish, and the titles identify some of these fabrications as a night book, dream diary, prayer book, tree journal, memory book, or almanac. But the overall impression is of colors -- mostly blue, brown, and white -- and textures, not of anything legible. Rather than yield commandments engraved in stone, Klagsbrun's telling of an exodus produces only fragments that are gnarled, fragile, and intriguingly inchoate.”
Review by Mark Jenkins, DisCerning Eye, May 2025. Thank you!