| Saint Clair Cemin, James Hyde, and Jac LeirnerDecember 14, 2006- January 27, 2007
Sikkema Jenkins & Co. will present a three-person exhibition featuring Saint Clair Cemin, James Hyde, and Jac Leirner. Working on a grand scale, these artists invigorate the viewing experience through their use of illuminating, reflective, and transparent materials.
Brazilian artist Jac Leirner will exhibit works from an ongoing series, entitled "Little Lights." Past works have patterned thousands of feet of electrical wire into a minimalist grid, terminating in a brightly shining light bulb. Other sculptures use shipping pallets as supports for massive spools of wire, again terminating in a single bulb. These works invite metaphors of a long journey, and discovery arrived at by circuitous routes.
Saint Clair Cemin, also Brazilian, will present a series of fine-polished sculptures modeled after the mate cuia – a gourd used in South America to hold mate tea. Twelve breast-shaped cuia are positioned around a dodecahedron (one of the five Platonic solids), creating a globe. Typical of Cemin's pluralistic approach to art, these works reference a wide range of sources, from Platonic philosophy to vernacular Brazilian craft, and are treated with a shimmering industrial finish.
American painter/sculptor James Hyde continues to stress definitions of abstract painting with monumental 3D paintings housed in glass boxes. Elaborate constructions of smeared paint and assemblage, the boxes force the viewer to maneuver and negotiate a dimensional painted volume. The transparent glass housing serves as both a barrier from, and entrance to, Hyde's masterful compositions, making the viewer keenly aware of both the artifice and the privilege of looking.
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