Russell Maltz
Concrete - Glass - Diamonds
27. Oktober 2007 - 31. Januar 2008
[...]Transparency characterizes the "Green Diamonds" and "Ballpark Diamond" series of Russell Maltz, whose multilayered glass sculpture raise this modernist principle to a heightened level of perception. Assembled of two or three vitreous plates, each sculpture comprising the respective series is partially painted in green - or in a combination of green and white - enamel or polyurethane pigment. Differing essentially from the narrative nature of the traditional "Hinterglasmalerei", Maltz applies his restricted palette of opaque color in perfectly controlled rectilinear forms: elongated or near-equilateral rectangles on or near a panel's edge, or an occasional broad quadrilateral penetrating the center of a roughly eighteen-inch square glass support. What results is a concatenation of transparent planes and floating geomatrical forms of (mostly) green. Canted slightly so that each of the "stacked" panels shifts axis, the sculpture enables the viewer to see literally through the serried glass layers. Moreover, the tilted planes allow the carefully calculated painted rectangles to be perceived as suspended in space, as if floating optically in two dimensions, though literally existing in three. By such arteful orchestration of layering, not only has Maltz brought modernist transparency into a contemporary setting, he has also exposed the interpenetration between two- and three-dimensional art.[...]
Steven Mansbach
