Word: corbero
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...season's shows in Manhattan, one that was unaccountably ignored by critics is Xavier Corbero's at the BlumHelman Warehouse (through June 11). At 53, Corbero, a Catalan who lives in Barcelona, is one of the best though most idiosyncratic sculptors in Europe; his show, "The Catalan Opening," contains work of such metaphorical richness, variety and wit that one would need to be an aesthetic pruneface not to enjoy...
...Catalan opening is, of course, a chess gambit. Corbero's exhibition is a set of 16 black chess pieces -- king and queen, hulking monoliths more than 9 1/2 ft. high, and a whimsical army of knights, bishops, rooks and pawns, all carved and constructed from basalt. This brittle volcanic rock is too hard to chisel cleanly; it can only be sawed or broken like a flint. Corbero revels in the risks of breaking it. Each piece of basalt becomes a found object -- altered, but bearing a memory of the raw look it had in the quarry...
...just Catalan in name. It prolongs the spirit of older Barcelonan artists and architects, a sense of material fantasy that still saturates the place and gives Corbero's work its sardonic, free-associating air and its obsessively fine craftsmanship. There are delicious Miroesque touches in this show, like the comb jauntily set on the queen's head, grooved with the bars of the Catalan shield, or the wacky little pyramid that balances on the needle peak of a pawn called Miss Capicua, 1987-88. Other details resurrect the images of heraldic encounter, the dungeons and dragons that lie within...
...Corbero's work looks fairly orthodox, nevertheless, beside that of the young Scotsman David Mach, 32, showing at the Barbara Toll gallery (also through June 11). There is one object on view. It fills most of the gallery. It is called A Million Miles Away and is made from some 28,000 magazines -- surplus copies of House Beautiful, Esquire, Town & Country and the like -- spilling in a torrent from a fireplace, across the floor and through a wall and another fireplace. Embedded in them are a bathtub, a stuffed zebra and what must be the world's largest outboard motor...
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