Beautiful Violence

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Lucio Fontana, Concetto Spaziale, 1962, copper, 38 1/4 x 77 3/8 inches

I can’t say that I was wild about the Lucio Fontana/Sterling Ruby exhibition at the Andrea Rosen Gallery (closing tomorrow), but I loved this copper piece by Fontana. However you would describe it, painting or sculpture, it consists of a surface rent by five roughly vertical slashes. In cutting the thick copper foil—you can see where the knife went followed by the staccato stops, tentative at first, as he pulled and rested, pulled and rested—Fontana didn’t just expose the inside to the outside, as he did with his painting, but created a beautiful yet violent topography that appears higher and deeper because of the way the metal reflects and refracts the light: pools of bright color melting into deep, almost bloody shadows, and just as suddenly flowing out again into the light.  

Detail of Concetto Spaziale

Two angled views of the work, above and below

Big thanks to Andrea Rosen (that's she with the silver hair at left in the photo above) for showing this spectacular piece

There’s more beautiful orange metal in the neighborhood: Richard Serra’s enormous torqued and maze-like sculpture at Gagosian. I’ll post pictures soon.  Here’s a peek: