Review of “Economy of Form” at David Klein Gallery @ Detroit Art Review
Viewing just the south-facing wall of the main gallery at David Klein Gallery’s new downtown Detroit location, you might never imagine that there are three different artists included in the current show, Economy of Form: Matthew Hawtin, Mary Kim, and Mark Sengbusch, which held its opening reception on November 14th, and will run through December 24th. Closest to the door is Pitch, a six-sided monochrome piece in matte black by Hawtin—a dimensional canvas that resembles an iconic jewel shape tipped on its side. This flows in seamless conversation with Kim’s Two circles, which conveys two roughly circular forms made out of rigid lengths of wood, likewise bending outside the 2D plane, and swathed in bright acrylic shades of chartreuse and red. The wall terminates in Sengbusch’s Gibson 6, which distills his signature set of symbols, laboriously scrimshawed into acrylic-painted wood, into six scaled-up details in shades of matte black and grey.
Spare arrangements, vibrant monotones, and careful use of geometry is present in all three bodies of work, and the exhibition title refers to a characteristic of the term “hard edge,” first applied to Four Abstract Classicists, which opened at the San Francisco Museum of Art in 1959. The artists featured in the 1959 show were John McLaughlin, Lorser Feitelson, Frederick Hammersley, and Karl Benjamin, and give clues to some of the formal inspiration for the artists on display at David Klein—as indeed they have spawned entire generations of work springing from these starting points, including that of Ellsworth Kelly, Robert Indiana, Paul Feely, and numerous others.