Catch as Catch Can

Gregory Nangle: Self-Hip-Gnosis

by Robin Rice

Greg Nangle once told me that his interest in art goes back to an M.C. Escher print he could see from his bunk bed when he was a kid. Both artists specialize in making the impossible appear almost logical, but few viewers would quickly make a connection between the two.

Nangle's metal-and-glass sculpture, currently featured in a solo show at Silica Galleries, sometimes includes simple geometric forms like those in Escher's two-dimensional work, but his best art is more organic — capturing all the blemishes, dings, flows and crumples we associate with living, moving, imperfect things.

The collection, titled "Self-Hip-Gnosis," delivers a satisfying jolt of astonishment at the conjunction between the refinement of an Escher-esque technique and the fluidity and accidental effects intrinsic to materials that melt. These flow qualities perhaps reflect another of Nangle's favorites, Hieronymus Bosch, and his disturbingly convincing and scary world.

Nangle often makes complex, multipart works; however, the show at Silica feels a little sparse. It's dominated, numerically at any rate, by a series of spray cans (pictured) that are empty or, like bell jars, enclose aggregations of stuff.

The cans consist of glass cylinders seemingly cut from some kind of manufactured glass tubing and topped with a nonfunctional bronze cast of the external spray mechanism. Nangle does not concern himself with plastic tops.

Canned individually, under glass, are a bicycle chain with its vertebral links crumpled together; tiny gears, perhaps from an old clock; and small, lumpy glass bottles. Another can is filled with pointed chandelier lightbulbs.

These glass-and-metal containers are precisely modeled on commercial spray-paint cans, one of which is included in the show, perhaps for comparison. Why did Nangle choose to replace the expressive medium of paint with various mass-produced items — such as an individual screwdriver? Do they tell us that an artist's potential begins with his materials? That might generally be true, especially of this artist. The cans are fun and engaging; I bet people enjoy them and buy them. But ultimately they seem more clever than profound.

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This is also true of a bowl of miniature glass grenades: amusing tchotchkes, tied ornament-like with Christmas ribbon.

The spray cans contrast the weight of the metal top section with the fragile glass cylinder supporting it. A more dramatic juxtaposition of these materials can be seen in works combining green-patinaed nickel apples with glass. In one piece, a solitary apple is cushioned on clear glass "cloth" inside a box cast from corrugated cardboard. In a more abstract variation, a cluster of apples appears to dent a thick vague cushion of clear glass. The surface of the life-size apples is slightly crumbly against the ultra-smooth, sensuous base.

The two best works in the show reprise elements of earlier pieces. Gravity's Teacup consists of three cups of bronze seemingly melting under the heat of glass liquid. Take Everything is a bronze ladle "pouring" a rippling flow of clear glass into a bronze bowl; in reality, the glass supports the ladle. Nangle has made a more ambitious version of this work: One includes a whole row of ladles and glass of graduated heights. Though more impressive technically, the feeling is, oddly, more minimal, more cipher-like.

Nangle's understanding of glass and bronze is critical to the way he depicts these materials in states usually only observed in the hot shop, where they can be seen in their most fascinating mutable and fluid state. In Nangle's best work, this fluidity resonates with metaphysical insights. It suggests that everything we ordinarily see and experience is just a skin obscuring a mysterious energy flow, the stuff of all things.

(r_rice@citypaper.net)

Gregory Nangle: Self-Hip-Gnosis | Through Feb. 1, Silica Galleries, 908-A N. Third St., 215-627-3655 silicagalleries.com