The Parallax View
Barbara MacAdam
Lehmann Maupin
The surprise in this elegant gathering was the way these works were poised to engage in a series of colloquys that, by virtue of proximity, positioning in the gallery, and viewing angles, allowed them to stand up for themselves independently and also to change as they related to one another. At the same time, the entire installation activated the gallery's generally unresponsive architectural space.
It took an imaginative curatorial hand to pull this off. The Miami-based curator Manuel Gonzalez assembled intriguing works-some familiar, others lesser known but nonetheless exceptional- by Minimalist-leaning heavy hitters including Teresita Fernandez, Dan Flavin, Gego, Mary Heilmann, Eva Hesse, Robert Irwin, Agnes Martin, Robert Morris, Bruce Nauman, and Robert Smithson.
Enlightening (literally) pairings included Flavin's intensely green streak of neon in the back room and Gego's constructions on the opposite wall. The former lent an unexpectedly warm and romantic glow to the shadows behind the square-ish wire works. Illuminating in the main gallery was the juxtaposition of Fernandez's white square reflecting floor sculpture against Morris's steely gray but gently circular wall piece, titled Observatory (1972). Both of these comparisons engaged the works in masculine-feminine conversation with unexpected conclusions: the Gego softened by the Flavin; the hard-edged, reflective Fernandez countered by the rough-coated but sensuous Morris.
Presiding over the ensemble and generating the show's title was Nauman's tall white wallboard Parallax Shell (1971/2000), with four peek-through seams and an open, irregular top, allowing shadows to continually reshape the interior as viewers awaited enlightenment, or simply light, from above.
Looking from the shell over to Nauman's sketch for it, then to a line of Smithson drawings that were all variations on the spiral, and on to a sea-blue Heilmann painting with forking directional lines, we were granted a rare opportunity to glimpse a variety of introspective views of the creative process.