New York
Peter Blum Chelsea
Esther Kläs came to New York for graduate studies at Hunter College, and it looks like she is determined to stay. This is to the city’s advantage, for Kläs is an excellent practitioner of postmodern sculpture, a genre that offers considerable freedom and a respite from the burdens of traditional art. Although Kläs’s work clearly engages in a dialogue with Modernism, there is an ad hoc, indeterminate, and informal attitude in her constructions. For instance, HA (2011) is held together by tape, while Trouvé (2011) consists of concrete, a coarse material associated more with building than sculpture. Unlike the Minimalists, who usually worked in series, Kläs seems to have a different motive—or at least an individual respect—for each individual piece as a discrete work of art. For example, the two sculptures mentioned above share an aesthetic of fundamental, rudimentary materials, yet visually they couldn’t be more different. …see the entire review in the print version of May’s Sculpture magazine.
