Mel Kendrick: 21 Sculptures

The Drawing Room is pleased to present  an exhibition of Mel Kendrick's sculpture that offers a concise survey of the artist's approaches to working in wood from the early 1990s to the present. Ranging from six to twenty-one inches tall, the sculptures are staged at the center of the gallery’s vaulted space on the artist’s 8- foot long studio worktable. Conceived to echo Kendrick’s own experience studying works he had saved to revisit and mine for future inspiration, the installation provides viewers with a rare window on the acclaimed artist’s practice.

The works selected for the exhibition reflect salient strategies Kendrick has explored and refined over several decades using single blocks of mahogany, walnut, ebony and other woods. Many sculptures are animated with bold hues of Japan color, a luminous paint that is a signature element across several bodies of Kendrick's work. Because the artist builds his compositions through a puzzle-like process of cutting and reconfiguring roughhewn materials, each sculpture demands close engagement and viewing from multiple perspectives. Moving through the space to explore different vantage points, the viewer encounters silhouettes that shift from playful and anthropomorphic to timeless and monumental.

Mel Kendrick (b. Boston, 1949) lives and works in New York City, where he moved in 1971 to enroll in the master’s program at Hunter College. While working toward his degree, his professors included Tony Smith and Robert Morris. At the time of his arrival, New York was the epicenter of Minimalism, and Kendrick’s own artistic development evolved in response to the rigid and analytical tenets that were predominant. Instead of embracing a process bound by the constraints of a systematic methodology, he chose to maximize the potential of reassembling the modules he created when cutting up and dismantling his source materials.

 See below for full press release and selected works.