For more than four decades Bryan Hunt’s sculpture has embraced a broad range of formal considerations ranging from natural phenomena – water, lakes, quarries, flumes and waterfalls – as well as direct but abstracted references to the figure and to aviation and space exploration.
In this exhibition, the artist “recalculates” an earlier thematic preoccupation by employing variations on his signature form: the airship or dirigible, first shown in 1974 at the Clocktower in New York. Hunt’s latest works transform his classic dirigible into standing, reclining or curving “spirals” and cantilevered “U” like shapes, enhanced by surfaces of rubbed graphite and copper or silver patinas. Like the earlier airships, these works are "abstract volumes first and recognizable objects second, reversing the modernist artist’s movement from representation to abstraction, adding layers of allusion that enhance the overall experience." [1] Unlike the original airships, however, these sculptures curve back on themselves, implying a sense of self-examination and reflection.
The standing sculptures, "Black Venus" and "Silver Spiral", are perched en pointe on their bases. These sensual, seemingly buoyant sculptures defy concepts of weight and volume.
In 2011, a survey of Hunt’s Waterfall sculpture series was installed on Park Avenue between 52nd and 57th streets in Manhattan. Including work from 1977-2006, the project was the largest and most ambitious outdoor display of his sculpture to date. Also in 2011, the Guild Hall Museum in East Hampton, New York organized "Waterfalls, Lakes and Quarries," an exhibition of sculpture and drawings.
Born in Terre Haute, IN in 1947, Bryan Hunt received his BFA at the Otis Art Institute of Los Angeles and completed an independent study program through the Whitney Museum of American Art. Hunt’s work is included in the collections of many major museums, among them, the Museum of Modern Art, the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, the Whitney Museum of American Art, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art; the Frank Lloyd Wright Fallingwater Conservancy, Bear Run, PA, the Hirshhorn Museum, Washington DC, the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; and the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam. Bryan Hunt lives and works in New York City and Long Island.
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[1] Constance Lewalllen. Bryan Hunt: Monuments and Wonders, 1974-79.” Philadelphia: Locks Gallery, 2007.
