Since the early 1990s, Blane De St. Croix has focused his sculpture on the various tensions underlying disjunctive communication. The theme first appeared in Excavation (1994) and Bed of Wicker, Bed of Straw, Bed of Clay (1995), which brought elements of outdoor environments into the gallery. These works also marked the beginning of De St. Croix’s extensive foray into sculpted landscapes. During a spring 2009 show at Smack Mellon gallery, he presented Broken Landscape, a monolithic, but small-scale critique of the U.S.-Mexico border. Two concurrent installations that fall—Mountain Strip, at the Black and White Project Space in Brooklyn, and Floating Fires, at the Bob Rauschenberg Gallery in Fort Myers, Florida—explored different land issues. Mountain Strip, which responded to the strip-mining industry, featured a monumental upside-down mountaintop, while Floating Fires portrayed the results of encroachment and forest fires in a darkened and burnt Florida Everglades. …see the entire article in the print version of December’s Sculpture magazine.
