REVIEW OF EXHIBITIONS

KIRCHBERG, SWITZERLAND
Lucie Schenker
at Schönberger
Lucie Schenker is amidcareer artist well-known in Switzerland
for drawings, sculpture, wall- pieces and installations utilizing wire screening. Examples of the first three were included in this exhibition. Her three-dimensional Works consist of geometric forms assembied from the screening and combined into multipart con- stellations. Many pieces, such as the striking Kub in Kub (Cube in Cube), are faintly spray-painted in one direction, causing impres- sions of color to emerge and ecede from the gray base tone of the wire mesh as one circles the
Object. Window screening is an uncommon sight in this part of Europe, although familiär to this American viewer or to Southern
Europeans. One of the strengths of Schenker’s work lies in this
substance’s cultural specificity and hints of domesticity.
The geometry and sectioning of Schenker’s pieces are inspired by Minimalism, yet their sense of pli- ant flexibility denies the underlying shape, giving them implications of antiform. While viewing the show I had astrong desire to see afew of the pieces constructed in a more aggressive gridding, per- haps chain-link. Yet Ialso distrust my response. Schenker succeeds with her material. Perhaps it is simply atypical male desire to wish for something more rigid and severe. In fact, in her smaller Objects Schenker appears to be tenaciously seeking afemale for¬ mal vocabulary, much like many women of the first wave of femi- nist art in the ’70s. The artist is of that generation, although of adif¬
ferent culture where such an approach was not widespread.
Schenker creates her drawings and lithographs by applying sim¬ ple strokes through screening
inverted frottage. The wire sieve resists her mark-making. It frac- tures the gestures into scumbied snippets that nevertheless retain a semblance of linear motion. These works do not photograph well, for when they are reduced in size or seen at adistance only a faint haze is perceptible. At dose
quarters afascinating apposition of resolute linear movement and
trembling pointillist flurry arises. Sculptural or flat, Schenker’s art is materiaily and metaphorically sim¬ ple yet sensual, and literally
self-contained yet open.
—Mark Staff Brand!