Eli Ping, Hardly Softly, 2011. Cotton, gesso, dye, acrylic, and wax, 65 x 52.5 x 12 in.

Eli Ping

New York

Susan Inglett Gallery

The works in Eli Ping’s recent exhibition continue his exploration of the dynamic interplay between painting and sculpture and challenge our perceptual understanding of both. In a nod to Ping’s process-oriented making, the show consisted of six large relief pieces that progressively moved from worked planar surfaces to meticulously crafted, three-dimensional forms. Throughout, Ping relies on molding, gouging, hammering, and layering to achieve an understated but kinetically elegant effect that defies his use of pared-down materials such as canvas, acrylic paint, wax, and supports. Diamond- and rectilinear-shaped works such as Hardly Softly, Morning Glory, and Indian Duck resonate with an internal animism and fascinate in their ability to capture a sense of the not-quite-familiar. …see the entire review in the print version of December’s Sculpture magazine.