Michael Rees at Bitforms


			Michael Rees: Sculpture: Large, small and moving at Bitforms Gallery
	Putto 8 2.2.2.2, 2003, Fiberglass with Emron automotive paint 78 x 62 x 72 in.
	In the middle of the nineteenth century, the renowned physician and transcendentalist Oliver Wendell Holmes hailed the invention of the stereograph, a term he coined, as mankind's greatest achievement because, he claimed, it allowed "form henceforth (to be) divorced from matter." For a century and a half, form has repeatedly asserted its independence from matter in myriad photographic and cinematic inventions. Matter has been a complacent codependent of form, but now has its own transcendent moment. Several emerging sculptors, including Michael Rees, use new technologies that result in a paradigm shift not only within sculpture, but in our perception of the virtual. Until recently, the virtual world has remained separated from actual space by the proscenium of the computer monitor. Rees uses the virtual space as a creative locus, but realizes his works in physical space. His three-dimensional renderings of computer-designed entities are a marked change from the two-dimensional print output of much art generated by computers, that in their manifestations are merely a substitute for the monitor. Rees accomplishes his sculptures through Rapid Prototyping (RP) machines that are becoming standard equipment in industrial design workshops. One such RP technology employed by Rees is stereolithography—a three dimensional printing process allowing an object that "exists" only in the virtual to become physical. This metaphysical shift is profound, but Rees interprets this new electronic medium without relying on it for content or presence. These resin-filled-plaster objects, all titled Putto 8 2.2.2.2 (2003) are crossovers from another plane of existence—they are paradoxes of a virtuality that, up until this point, has been a one-way looking glass. Rees points to the contradiction of the virtual world creating the physically real by proffering a paradoxical creature—an impossible Bellmeresque amalgam that writhes from version to version. The looped Putto 8 2.2.2.2 video is the focal point of the exhibition, the literal source for all of the objects; it demonstrates the kinetic possibilities of the sculptures and an entity that with eight infantile legs and a segmented shared torso, struggles with itself in paroxysms of parthenogenesis. Putto 8 2.2.2.2 auto wrestles in a Sisyphean recurrence occupying the same virtual limbo as Paul Pfeiffer's tormented basketball star from Fragment of a Crucifixion. Putti are cherubs—angels—but also mytheological manifestations of the heavenly—a realm that, like the virtual, is beyond our mortal grasp. Rees's cherubim come with a certain divine wisdom—the entity that struggles with itself is a timeless model of the human condition. The Putto 8 2.2.2.2 works relate to an ancient genealogy that includes Jacob wrestling with the heavenly emissary, an interlaced medieval serpent devouring its own tail, our internal angels and demons of conscience, and the drama of the Freudian psychodynamic. Rees's sculpted putti undoubtedly suffer identity issues given their genesis—they are matter that can hence be divorced from original form. Yet, like all creatures, they struggle with the ontological shock of their realization. William V. Ganis Michael Rees: Sculpture: Large, small and moving is at the Bitforms Gallery, New York, September 12 — October 18, 2003 and at the Dieter Zeibig Art Space, Cologne, October 31—December 5, 2003.

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