THE
Santa Fe's Monthly Magazine of the
Arts
PATINA GALLERY Boris Bally An evening stroll will catch each onlooker by surprise,capturing their desire to return." This line, lifted from a recent press relea issued by Santa Fe's new Patina Gallery, is certainly apt for this viewer. During a recent evening stroll down West Palace, I was immediately intrigued by the interesting mix of design and fine art objects on view in the windows. For my money, there can never be enough dealers in exceptional modern design objects in Santa Fe, and Patina appears to be a promising addition. Among the selection of one-of-a-kind furniture pieces, jewelry, and ceramics on display that evening, I was most struck by a pair of curiously luminescent. largish metal basins - one in brillant yellow, another in equally bright orange. These vessels were, despite their resolute modernity and simplicity, unquestionably conceived as though they were proud presentation objects, anything but humbly functional. The Renaissance and Middle Ages produced something similar and, consulting my dictionary, it appears that what I have in mind are "slavers" - from the French, a tray for presenting food to the king." The quality that seems to vault these lustrous objects into the realm of "fine" radier than "functional" art (that indescribable quality that makes a plece of Sevres something more than a pot) seems to indeed to reside in the original intent of the artist . It is certainly hard to envision these elegant basins heaped with potato chips or M & M's! Whether we take them as fine or functional, these creations by Bons Bally are most ingenious because the artist has fashioned them, unbelievably, from discarded roadside signage that he acquires from the Rhode Island Highway Department. Hence, of course, that odd luminosity. Their startling colored ground is made of pigmented beads calculated to reflect the maximurn arnount of light by night. As if this startling quality of emanating light were not enough, the fragments of words. arrows, or images that adorn these platters create the most engaging abstract designs asyrnmetrically arrayed across their surfaces. One vessel, illustrated in a leadirig metalsmiths' journal, sports the handsome design we all know as the warning "Deer Crossing." Adding to the geniality of these graphics and colors, the artisCalso occasionalty cuts into the (aluminum) rim of the bowl, following the outline of random letters spilling over the edge. This inventive use of recyclable material is exciting. Elsewhere in the new gallery, one can see equalty compelling pieces of very graphic jewelry by Bally: brooches. pins. earrings that are graphic to The point of declamatory (only the self-assured beauty would be drawn to such powerful pieces). If the performance of this one artist is any indication of the direction of Patina down that narrow path that skirts both the fine and the functional, then the new gallery definitely bears warching.
JAN ADLMANN
THE magzine - October 1999, Page 57
Slide Show | Resume | Publicity | Exhibitions | Galleries | Workshop | Personal | Contact | Links | Guestbook | Home |
