Santa Fe, New Mexico
Santa Fe Community College Visual Arts Gallery
Bill Georgenes’s recent work defies expectations. It is fresh and intensely focused. Made from cheap plastic toys, his constructions could be the fabrications of a young artist, yet Georgenes is a man in his mid-80s, who studied at Yale when Josef Albers was on the faculty. Georgenes’s early works were paintings, elegant and abstract, just what one would have expected from an artist with a Yale education. Yet 23 years ago, he began creating sculptures that were very different from anything he had previously made, finding his most personal creative voice. These sculptures transcend academic training and resonate with the energy of a man driven and unencumbered by the burden of art history. Toys transformed into sculptures provoke dream-like memories. For Georgenes, however, there were no toys in his childhood. During the first four years of his life, he lived alone in an attic; his only entertainment was a small window from which to observe passersby. …see the entire review in the print version of December’s Sculpture magazine.
