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Arts Canada - June/July 1971 New Montreal Sculpture (Excerpt)
At the Saidye Bronfman Centre a surprise show of surprise new sculpture testifying to the vitality of Montréal. Vitality which exists in the studios, but so rarely shown publicly: the galleries have neither the time, the space, nor the profits; the museums have neither the funds, the public, nor the will. The only regret is that the Centre is not a strollable distance from downtown to be filled with people moving through. From us a thanks to Saidye Bronfman Centre for taking the lead. The show itself: 18 sculptors, 25 sculptures. Some of the workers are familiar but all of the works are fresh. Almost all explore media: water, sand, wool, polyethylene, a person. I Yet these new materials themselves set up enlightening oppositions. Consider Water Piece by David Sorensen in which a heavy rope is suspended by its two ends from the ceiling to form an arc four feet from the floor; tied to it are four polyethylene bags, their bottom two feet filled with water, and knotted above it. Water in this piece is the crucial structural element giving weight and thereby tension to the whole system. The smooth curve of the arc of the rope is broken sharply at the points of connection with the lower system where the rope pulls upward on the polyethylene and the weight of the water in its four pods against the floor pulls downward on the rope. The formal structure which this system of tension creates presents a contrast to the informal nature of the materials: rope, water, polyethylene sheeting and their knotted connections.
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