Brooklyn
Confronting the prow of Andrea Loefke’s ark head-on made a powerful first impression. This foreshortened view indicated something vast and ominous looming just inside the gallery but offered only the merest hint of what was actually there. Homecoming marked a significant departure from Loefke’s previous installations, which have filled spaces with all manner of objects, large and small, through which viewer-participants were expected to walk, crawl, and even climb to become part of the visual experience. Here, however, in the middle of an otherwise empty space, was an object—a boat-like platform loaded with stuff—that was more sculpture than installation, something to be experienced through circumnavigation, the more circuits made, the more to be discovered. While Noah’s ark served to rescue the essentials of creation, Loefke’s ark set out to deal with nature in more immediate, personal ways. Her goal as well as her subject was remembrance. Working from a New Yorker’s first-hand experience of Hurricane Sandy, she reimagined, constructed, and juxtaposed sometimes idealized, sometimes rough, remnants of the havoc.…see the entire review in the print version of September’s Sculpture magazine.
