John Henry

New Sculpture

1 June - 7 July 2007

View Online Catalogue

Go to Henry Homepage

Blue Rhapsody, 1998, aluminium, 8 x 7 x 4ft

The scale can be monumental or table-top but the issues remain the same: starting from the ground and projecting
upwards, these works are interventions in space endlessly caught in suspension; they have weight but always seek to defy gravity.

Structurally of course there is at the core a filled volume. From this core, spars of machined metal lance off, creating a vectored space where the empty volumes trapped between these spars match the filled volume of the core. This matching of filled and empty volumes is what ultimately gives the work its satisfactory completeness. It is the directed and focussed energy from the tips of the spars though that somehow extends the sculpture beyond the space it occupies, imbuing it with qualities beyond the mechanical.

Vectra, 2007, aluminium, 9.4 x 12.5 x 10.5in

The grandeur of the monumental pieces is to do with their scale in relation to us, the viewer. The impact lies somewhere between St. Paul’s Cathedral, a very human feat, where one can almost feel the physical individual efforts put into its construction, and the Swiss Re Building (the Gherkin) which for all its ineffable scale doesn’t seem to have been made from the ground up – somehow does not feel rooted and more particularly does not feel as though it was made by individuals.

This honesty of construction makes it rather hard to think of these pieces in any post-modern way. They defy the
conceptual; there is nothing ironic in the work. Unapologetically present, there is a completeness that does not require any particular backdrop or environment. Whether installed in an English landscape or in the glass atrium of a Chicago skyscraper the pieces lose none of their identity.

Eclipse, 2007, aluminium, 11 x 9.25 x 6in

From the monumental to the small this identity is characterised by the attention to construction – on the large scale of course there is a structural imperative which must marry with Henry’s vision; on the small scale, where the limits of the materials are not being tested, there emerges instead a watch-makers talent for making the difficult look easy. Spars that rest on each other barely touching seem to hold themselves together by magnetism. Where slabs of metal lean against each other they seem to characterise falling cards, not weightless but not industrial heavy in the mould of Richard Serra or Mark di Suvero.

Chevron A, 2006, aluminium, 38 x 26 x 18.5in

And then of course there is the paint. This is not linked to the painted sculptures that Europeans know through the work of Anthony Caro, Philip King and others during the 1960’s and 70’s. Henry is not averse to leaving the materials exposed to the elements - the oxidized layer on steel has its attractions and its place. The uniformity of the single colour though means that whatever the backdrop, wherever the shadows fall there can be no doubts about the piece and its physical presence. As a solution it undoubtedly belongs again to the industrialized roots in America, an automotive based solution.

Looking at a large-scale John Henry sculpture is to be reminded of the vast expanse between the earth and the sky. Rooted on the ground, the works push and stretch upwards. These man-made, constructed, sculptures emerge from the big skies and endless plains of mid-west industrialised America. They are not though from that place, they are totemic and universal.

Sun Devil, 2004, aluminium, 23 x 12 x 10ft

John Henry was born in 1943 in Lexington, Kentucky. He attended the University of Kentucky and the School of the Art Institute of Chicago where he earned a B.F.A. Henry lives and works in Chattanooga, Tennessee. This will be his first solo exhibition at Broadbent.