Manuel Neri

2007

A sculptor of international significance whose works in plaster, ceramic, bronze, and stone have merited the 2006 Lifetime Achievement from the International Sculpture Center, Manuel Neri has created incredibly rich and evocative figurative relief sculptures for more than 25 years.

Since the early 1970s, Neri has worked with the same model. As the decades have progressed, Mary Julia Klimenko has also become a collaborator in every sense, whether in the poses she assumes, her gestures, the poetry she reads out loud as Neri works, or the original poetry she writes that is the basis for a series of spectacular artists' books they have created together.

Through 10 bronze sculptures with oil-based pigments, this exhibition offers an exploration of Neri's ideas about the figure in sculptural space and within the relief format. The direct physicality of the works in this exhibition, with their often-raw color, fragmented bodies, and open process of creation gives entrance to deeper strains of emotion and historical reference that only observation and time reveal for the viewer.

Curated by Bruce Guenther