Unique Sculptures by Cynthia Eardley at Ceres Gallery

Written by Cynthia Eardley Tuesday, 30 March 2010 20:47

New York, NY - Through interpretation of human form, facial expression, and gesture, Cynthia Eardley's hand-modeled, composite "portraits" convey, in part, the effects of tragedy on the human mind, and the resulting disassembling and rearranging of our identities and perspectives, for better or for worse. Eardley begins with a somewhat naturalistic approach to form, which she then literally cuts to pieces and reassembles  to provide a visceral glimpse into the complexities of human psychology, a territory often ignored in contemporary sculpture.

These works, which occupy a place somewhere between realism and abstraction, are not meant as literal images; instead, Eardley uses her well-honed craft and sense of form to explore our psychological underpinnings--often, in these latest sculptures, the  psychological damage inflicted by brutal circumstance.

She uses clothing, hairstyle, and ornament not only to convey individual identity in her invented portraits, but also to suggest an attempt to maintain order and perhaps a sense of human beauty,  or dignity, in the midst of chaos or outright catastrophe.  Unlike the "deadpan" look of many recent realist sculptures, her work uses color, material, scale, texture, and movement to create compositions that intensify the emotions she wants to convey in her sculptures and elicit from the viewer.

Rather than begin with a fully preconceived idea, Eardley creates these works by a process she describes as organic, that is, the images arise from her interactions with her materials--initially, in these current sculptures, oil-based clay.  Once the portraits are completed, they are cast into two or three multiples in a variety of materials, which she then combines with the "leftover" originals to create a new cast of characters, so to speak.

Formally, to Eardley, the images resulting from this process suggest those she first created in her early architecture, conceived while co-founder and co-director of the arts-and-architecture group SITE.  Her perhaps most memorable creations at that time--the "Floating Roof" and the "Peeling Project"--were the first in the Best Products series, shown worldwide and critical  to the then-incipient deconstructivist movement in architecture.  In these, she created the illusion that the very structure of the buildings--in particular, a shopping center in Richmond, Va--was falling part, the 30-foot brick facade "peeling" off in one case and the severed roof seeming to float away in the other.  Among her many intentions regarding these projects, she hoped to alter the perceptions of the store's customers, who might react initially with surprise and disbelief to the altered appearance of their local appliance center, but would eventually adjust to it, accepting the visual fantasy as an element of a now-familiar context. Similarly, certain of her current portrait "reconstructions" that at first appear disturbing (such as  "ManWoman") may ultimately coalesce into a familiar and accepted image, or  reflection, of an altered interior perspective.

Eardley wants her sculptures  to convey something of the physical quality of 16th century Spanish sculptures--the religious images that were  denigrated and virtually ignored during the Italian Renaissance largely because they were polychromed.  She  uses polychromy selectively, sometimes combining it with translucent materials, sometimes abandoning it altogether, depending on how each sculpture resonates: the tangible, physical, and visceral engage in  dialogue in Eardley's work with the  the spiritual and the light-filled.  The fully polychromed "Broken Man" transmits his mental anguish through colorful, physical, formal violence, while the fully "Translucent Man" seems to have transformed into light--a light Eardley relates to the experience of St. Francis as he exits his cell in Bellini's early Renaissance painting.

Eardley lives and works in Lower Manhattan, where she teaches sculpture, anatomy, and art history at the New York Academy of Art Graduate School of Figurative Art.

Her solo exhibit of her sculptures, including photographs of installed translucent mobiles based on the human form, opens at Ceres Gallery March 30 and continues through April 24, 2010. Ceres is located at 547 W. 27 St, New York City. Tel: 212-947-6100.  Hours: Tues-Sat, 12-6; Thurs,12-8.  Email: This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it   or  www.cynthiaeardley.com