Jene Highstein, installation view of “New Sculpture/Towers and Elliptical Forms,” 2011.

Jene Highstein

New York

Danese Gallery

Jene Highstein’s new stainless steel sculptures have a formal morphological relation to his earlier work, going back to the 1970s. In contrast to the generation of Minimal artists who emerged in the early 1960s—Judd, Flavin, Morris, LeWitt, and Andre—Highstein entered the Minimalist stage somewhat later. At the time, his forms were less involved with geometry than with monumental organic shapes—not exactly rocks or boulders, but something ineffable, less indebted to construction or Constructivism and more open to the singular form that could stand in relation to nature or culture. For the most part, Highstein’s forms were painted black, further intensifying their relationship to the space around them. Whereas one could identify with the existence of “primary forms,” in Highstein’s work, the form was largely unknown and therefore not primary. …see the entire review in the print version of January/February’s Sculpture magazine.