Chicago
McCormick Gallery
Richard Hunt’s recent exhibition of rarely seen early sculptures and works on paper was a remarkable mini-retrospective of pieces never exhibited outside his studio in Benton Harbor (Michigan) since they were created in the mid-1950s. They demonstrate how Hunt was able to forge a personal sculptural identity at a time when the subjective and expressive content of the Modernist imagination was still thriving, driven by Surrealist automatism and subconscious expression. Abstract Expressionism, with its themes of mythopoetic tragedy and existential anxiety, as well as the work of Spanish sculptor Julio González, were among Hunt’s early influences. The earliest pieces, from 1955, depict skeletal humanoids that owe a debt to Giacometti’s post-apocalyptic figures. Hunt followed these with a remarkable series of welded amalgamations that included scrap yard cast-offs such as chair legs, tubes, bicycle parts, a wheel, a doorknob, and segments of tire rims. Poetically re-humanized by their rusty surfaces, these works surprise with their inventive and animated suspension in space. …see the entire review in the print version of May’s Sculpture magazine.
