Reeves Contemporary opens an exhibition of new sculptures by Milan Klic, which opens with an artist’s reception on January 10th between 6-8 p.m. The show continues through February 9th.
Klic’s whimsical freestanding sculptures intertwine bamboo, thread and wood. These delicate “vehicles” teeter in awkward balance on their wheel-like bases. The spindly bamboo structures are threaded, producing a web of lyrical drawings in space. The frailty of these looming, seven and eight-foot sculptures hover over the spectator poised for movement; silent and contemplative bearing witness to a world obsessed with relentless mobility. Jonathan Goodman has remarked in Art in America, “Klic has a light hand and a sense of humor that connect his work to the Dada tradition. With their big wheels and winglike canopies, his vehicles look like exquisite flying machines”.
Echoing the large, freestanding sculptures are wall-mounted pieces, which combine wood, stainless steel, cotton and bamboo. Pairing these diverse materials yields all at once an exchange of fragility and strength. The sculptures are a way of commenting on the indelible traces we impose on our natural and social environment. The density of the materials suggests the irreversibility of our actions while the extreme delicacy of the materials suggests that our actions are ultimately insubstantial.
Milan Klic emigrated from the Czech Republic and continued his studies at Brandies University in Boston. He settled in the northeast, and has shown his work at the Newport Art Museum, Fuller Museum of Art, the International Institute of Boston, and the DeCordova Museum. His work, which has been shown in the United States, and abroad, and is in numerous private and corporate collections. Klic was the recipient of a Pollock-Krasner Grant in 2001.