Minimalist artists cut away all nonessential elements to reveal underlying design components. Don Gummer, whose inspiration is architecture, removes architecture’s reason for existence: to house people and things.
“I think of them as architecture without a client, without plumbing, pure space, totally non-functioning,” Gummer said of his works. “These are objects made for people to project themselves into, more mentally than physically. These are something to make you think and contemplate on lines and planes, closed and open space.”
The sculptor has a retrospective at Mattatuck Museum in Waterbury of his architecture-inspired minimalist wall pieces and his preparatory blueprints. The exhibit also features a large-scale (24 feet wide, 6 feet high, 11 feet deep) floor sculpture of “Ionic Loggia,” a work inspired by a building he saw in Florence, Italy. “Iconic Loggia” has not been recreated since the work was first presented in 1977.
The wood-and-sheetrock works show an earlier period in Gummer’s decades-long career; lately, he has been focusing on metal sculptures, such as the nine outdoor pieces now on exhibit in New York, on Broadway between Columbus Circle and 157th Street, until October.
Mattatuck Museum Director Bob Burns said he was attracted to Gummer’s architecture-inspired works when he visited his studio two years ago. “The scale, the colors, the design and the intricacy of the construction of the wall relief sculptures immediately captivated me,” Burns said. “The drawings, paintings, collage works that precede and inform the constructions are also quite powerful on their own. … The constructions are quite powerful and clearly inherent to his craft.”
Gummer, a native of Indiana who studied at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston and at Yale University, is inspired by all kinds of architecture, but is especially drawn to the Italian Renaissance — “how they measure things to relate to the human body” — and the Japanese Edo period, “where everything is based on tatami proportions.”
Many of his works are based on buildings he has seen in his travels or in architecture books. Some designs, however, spring entirely from his imagination, from “the floor plans in my head,” he said.
Some of Gummer’s works show the simplified lines of one building, while others stack buildings on top of each other. Sometimes these buildings have architectural features in common, such as juxtaposing the Santa Maria Delle Grazia, where DaVinci’s “The Last Supper” is on display, and the floor plan of an Italian cloister also designed by Donato Bramante. Gummer said of the structures, “the floor plans are the souls of the buildings.”
Sometimes the pairings reach across continents, as when Gummer stacks a residence designed by R.M. Schindler alongside work by the Chinese architect Atelier Jianshu.
One work is based on his real life: a simplified schematic of the 1820 guest house on his Salisbury property, which his wife jokingly tells visitors is haunted. (Gummer’s wife is actress Meryl Streep.) The goal of the piece is the same as the others, “to show what is behind the walls,” no ghosts, just stripped-down, simplified lines.
Other Exhibits
The Mattatuck recently opened two other exhibits, in the first-floor galleries.
“Chance, Control, Collaboration” is made up of four videos. “Body Collage,” a silent, four-minute, black-and-white film from 1967, shows artist Carolee Schneemann covering her nude body in a clear, gooey adhesive and then rolling in tissue paper. “Telephone,” by Christian Marclay, from 1995, is a seven-and-a-half minute compilation of clips from old movies, showing people using telephones. “Inventory of small deaths (blow),” a 2000 piece by Rivane Neuenschwander and Cao Guimaraes of Brazil, is an almost hourlong musing on a bubble that wafts over a black-and-white countryside, constantly changing shape as it floats about. “Wrestling,” a three-minute piece created in 2002 by Jen DeNike, shows two boys wrestling.
“Unsettled Identities” focuses on five artists and shows their early- and late-career work to see how their techniques and approaches have changed and how they have grown and been influenced by other artists.
The early work by Duvian Montoya, who is also the show’s curator, reflects on his experience as the child of immigrants from Colombia, showing a proud, flag-waving baby flanked by worried parents. His later work comments on the falsity of online interactions, by depicting a couple sitting in a living room, surrounded by labeled possessions, as in a sales catalog.
Amy Bilden of Greenwich focuses on family, also. Her early work, “Timeline,” is a long scarf she knitted in a hospital waiting room when her grandfather was sick. It is wound into a spiral, dotted by trinkets her family owned. Bilden’s later work features two shoes seeming to float above the gallery floor, tied by a series of threads from her grandmother’s sewing kit.
Jamison Chas Banks’ 2005 mixed-media “This is America” shows Mickey Mouse cringing as a mushroom cloud blooms, and his later work comments on the movie-theater shootings in Aurora, Colo., as Batwoman reacts to the news.
Jahmane West’s early mixed media, “Operation Cracktonite” reflects on the 1980s CIA connection to the Nicaraguan drug trade. His later work, “Electra 14,” is a stencil-like portrait of an African American woman.
The strongest impression will be left by the oils of Vincent Calenzo of Milford, whose works reflect his appreciation for religious art but his disdain for religion itself. His early work,” The Garden,” shows an alternative version of Adam and Eve, with Adam a portly, vicious-looking butcher and Eve with snakes protruding from her breasts. His later work, “Birdhouse,” shows Eve surrounded by demons, with a birdhouse strapped to her head.
“SPIRIT OF PLACE: DON GUMMER, DRAWINGS AND WALL RELIEFS,” “UNSETTLED IDENTITIES” and “CHANCE, CONTROL, COLLABORATION” are at Mattatuck Museum, 144 West Main St., Waterbury. “Gummer” and “Identities” are up until Sept. 13. “Chance” is up until Sept. 6. mattatuckmuseum.org.
