Basketweave Pyramid, 2005, fused and wheel ground glass, murrine and batutto techniques, 7.625" x 11.875" x 11.875"
In the increasingly ambitious local art world, the notion of "world class" has become a "Wizard of Oz" mantra -- say it enough times and it will come true.
Well, this month, the Portland art world highlights a truly world-class artist whose stature requires no clicking of the heels: Richard Marquis, the venerated sculptor who has an exhibit of new glasswork at The Bullseye Gallery.
In the 1960s, Marquis was one of the first Americans to learn the revered glass-blowing techniques taught at the Venini glass factory in Murano, Italy. When he finished his Fulbright Fellowship and returned to the U.S., Marquis started to share that knowledge with other artists, including nascent art students.
Some think such coughing up of long-protected secrets puzzled a few Old Guard European artisans who felt the American artist was being, well, a freewheeling American. Looking back, however, you could say Marquis was just practicing a form of social networking before it became a conceptual art movement.
Of course, hundreds of artists have been influenced by Marquis, either directly or indirectly. But as the new Bullseye exhibit reaffirms, few can equal his protean craftsmanship or his conceptual brilliance -- the way he fuses a hip, slightly cutting American sense of humor with European craft traditions. In Marquis' world, ordinary objects become sophisticated, offhanded jokes and puns crafted by the class jokester/genius.
A pyramid shape, for example, becomes an outrageously ecstatic, confetti-colored sculpture that bears closer resemblance to a dunce hat. Eggs, a Marquis favorite, are featured prominently in this show, with dozens of them bearing intricately detailed patterns that recall the microscopic delicacy of Indian miniature painting. Of course, Marquis occasionally tweaks these glistening objects of beauty by irreverently putting a few of them in cages.
There's much more: A bottle sprouts little horns. And perhaps most brilliantly, sleek, angular forms shaped like cucumbers are turned into striped assault vehicles.
Looking at these mightily priced works, some of which cost $38,000, I wonder how this superlative artist would transform the mundane stapler on my desk into something otherworldly.
Source Link:http://www.oregonlive.com/artsandevents