Jackie Ferrara at Federiecke Taylor/TZ'Art


			Jackie Ferrara at Frederieke Taylor / TZ'Art
	Installation view, 1998
	In the final throes of SoHo’s gentrification, the neighborhood has become home to as many design and furniture stores as art galleries. Jackie Ferrara’s works are hybrid creations of art and design. Regardless of how her works function, either as seats, wall finishes, or floor tiles, the materials become part of the percentage for art budget in the grand architectural scheme. In this exhibition Ferrara expresses a more intimate scale than her landscape architecture megaprojects. Unfortunately, these exhibited works aspire to a larger, integrated undertaking and seem disjointed when presented as individual art objects. She maintains the language of design and architecture, however, through structural regularity and the use of wood building materials. For her Slatted Bench (1998) and Corner Chair (1998) Ferrara chooses cedar for durability, and because its grains and color are naturally beautiful. Both works are composed of evenly spaced voids and precision cut materials that evoke the grid of International Style architecture, although Corner Chair has a curving back in harmony with the arcs of the exhibition’s other pieces. These seats are inviting but not terribly comfortable objects for public spaces that when made domestic are better lived with than lived in. The largest piece is the Red Arches (1998) installation that covers two gallery walls. This twelve foot tall blind arch motif is repeated eight and a half times. Each of the arches is composed of many smaller pieces of plywood that have been subtly stained blonde and red. This change in color, as well as cuts that form the jagged semicircles, optically define the arches. This minimal boiserie exudes warmth and richness especially in contrast to the expected stark gallery walls. The most successful pieces are the least functional. The sculptural Pyramid/Bowl (1998) is a small mahogany ziggurat of alternating slats and voids that includes an interior hyperboloid concavity. This piece expresses continuity with the artist’s earlier sculptures. The bowl is expressed on the exterior of the work as a parabolic design, an upside down arch. These graceful curves are a gestalt effect achieved through the careful juxtaposition of many small right angled blocks. This work begs phenomenological analysis since one’s perception and an optical moiré effect changes relative to perspective or merely looking inside or outside. The accompanying graph paper diagrams for this structure serve not only as fabricator’s instructions but also to reveal the manifestation of mathematical permutations in wood. Concepts are thus made flesh according to Ferrara. William V. Ganis Jackie Ferrara: Red Arches is on view at the Frederieke Taylor / TZ'ART Gallery October 29 - December 24, 1998.

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