Word: seley
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1960-1969
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...York's bearded, gently humorous Jason Seley, 47, whose latest show opened at Manhattan's Kornblee Gallery last week, strives for the best of both worlds. His angular, hole-marked and hollowly curvilinear pieces are welded together from junk. But since he works with slightly used chrome-plated automobile bumpers, the results are so gleamingly bright and so artfully constructed that some viewers are unaware that they are looking at automobile bumpers...
...Seley fell in love with his first bumper in 1956. Waiting for his car to be fixed in a junkyard adjoining a garage, he and his wife were struck by the distinctive shape of a '49 Buick Dyna-flow bumper. Convinced that there was still more "beauty to be extracted from it," he bought it for $1 -much to the amazement of the garage owner, since the Seleys' car was a Chevvy. Seley, who at the time was casting Henry Mooreish semi-abstracts in plaster and terra cotta, began using bumpers as armatures, covering them with plaster, then...
...mastered his medium, Seley has made his work less elongated, now welds many bumpers together in solid, chunky shapes instead of letting them stick out like the spines of a giant cactus. His forms have also been influenced by the style of the bumpers available at the Long Island car-parts supply house, where he buys them. Prince Valiant, so called because of its similarity to a Viking's shield, utilizes the rococo protuberances found on 1958 Oldsmobiles, of a type sometimes known in the auto industry as "Dagmars" (for the well-rounded TV comedienne of the 1950s...
Sculptor Jason Seley said that the market was flooded with fakes: "Some sculptures are simply taken off a Victorian lamp base." But he was one of the few to stick to the subject of forgery. Abstract Expressionist Adolph Gottlieb blasted at the public, in general and dealers in particular, saying, "Society doesn't seem to be interested in protecting the artist." Painter Theodoros Stamos lambasted dealers who "hold a picture for two years before they send it back, so you forget what the hell it looks like." Then added, "I don't give a damn about the public...
Outside, amid the purple petunias in the new Jacqueline Kennedy Garden was sculpture, including Oronzio Maldarelli's simple bronze nude, Branca II; down on the south lawn was Jason Seley's Masculine Presence, constructed from motorcar bumpers...