John Monti at Elizabeth Harris
by Roger Boyce
John Monti has exhibited regularly in New York since the mid-1980s. Against a
fluctuating backdrop of stylistic convulsion he has single-mindedly pursued his own ideas.
Monti's work is ingeniously devised and fabricated. His earliest wood sculptures, suggesting
unlikely mergers of Constructivism and West African ethnographic objects, displayed
joinery worthy of a piano builder or luthier. The artist's later, soft-edge Neo-Minimalist work -
which hung off walls and flattened onto floors - recruited industrial ingredients (rubber and
fiberglass) and similarly pushed the inherent limits of its materials.
His recent exhibition at Elizabeth Harris raised the technical bar. The scrupulous
fabrication of the low-relief wall ensembles in this show approaches the perverse. Drawing from
manufactured consumer products, the painstakingly handmade components are all but
indistinguishable from machine-made objects.
Reverse molds, fiberglass, resin, polycarbonate plastic, pigmented urethane rubber and metal
fasteners compose semi-bulbous gatherings of oversize medallions that would be at home adorning
carnival thrill rides. In the larger of the exhibition's two rooms, the walls are arrayed with
diminutive rubber ellipses. Black and white stacks of lilting, arm-length arabesques converge in
the corners. Cast-rubber asterisks optically pinwheel in a variety of garish synthetic hues. The overall
tone of the installation is one of joyous and unapologetic ornamental riot.
In the smaller room, the 44-by-56-by-8-inch Tangerine Smile (2004), a fulsome, sherbert-colored
swag made of fiberglass over foam, hung pendulously from the wall. A smaller freestanding version, Smile: Magenta (2004),
balanced on its counterweighted bottom at the room's center. The 22-inch-wide piece reportedly served
(in the studio) as a rocking horse for the sculptor's preschool son. The two flanking walls each contained Beauty Spots, five-lobed
polyester resin modules embedded in flexible multicolored nimbuses. Beauty Spot: Green (2004), at 35 by 35 by 6 inches, has a radiant
pollen green protrusion whose contours are sinuously reiterated by its pink and aqua rubber coronas.
Monti's beguiling exhibition casts a broad associative net. Finish Fetishist Craig Kaufman comes to mind
as do radial painters Beatriz Milthazes and Glenn Goldberg. The clamor and abundance of primary shapes
obliquely recalls Pattern & Decoration's best moments. Art history - from Matisse's cutouts to the material speculations of Art & Technology - blends with bright plastic playthings and three-dimensional signage borrowed
from consumer culture. One can linger and cerebrate or simply step in for a retinally intoxicating spin.