Post-Minimalist Sculptor John Duff Shows at The University of the Arts

Friday, 08 September 2006 14:02

PHILADELPHIA, PA – Post-minimalist American sculptor John Duff presents Something the Mind Knows at the Rosenwald-Wolf Gallery of The University of the Arts through October 19.  Having studied with Manuel Neri, Ron Nagel and Nauman at the San Francisco Art Institute, Duff first rose to the public consciousness in 1969 at the Whitney Museum’s Anti Illusion: Procedures/Materials.  The Whitney exhibition premiered the post-minimalist sensibility and his works were shown with Eva Hesse, Barry Le Va, Robert Ryman, Richard Serra, Keith Sonnier and Richard Tuttle.

Duff, who has exhibited in over 41 solo shows across the globe and is represented by Knoedler & Company in New York, produces works with an entropic formal geometry modified with a funky use of materials.  His sculpture are comprised of industrial products (fiberglass, alkyd enamel, casting plaster, steel) tempered with a painterly sense of touch that makes the work evocative, allusive and tactile – in opposition to the previous generation of Minimalists.

The exhibition contains a survey of works from the mid-1960s to present.  Early flat resin reliefs from California, Tie Piece (1969) a major process work embodying gender readings, ceramic vessels, columnar sculptures and painted cast resin reliefs (perhaps the genre with which he is most identified) – almost tribal in their mask-like frontality – will be included.  Duff’s Pauline Kael Never Sees a Movie Twice: Gaming Ursa Major, a new participatory wall drawing, will premiere during the exhibition.

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