In his first commercial gallery exhibition in more than four decades, artist Arthur Kern presents a suite of hauntingly lyrical cast-resin sculptures, dazzling in their technical mastery and thematic sophistication.  While Kern’s subject matter has spanned a broad range over the course of his career, this exhibition gathers together his equestrian sculptures, a genre whose elemental forms recall Etruscan statuary, Greco-Roman bas-relief, and the modernist panache of Marino Marini—all channeled through Kern’s profoundly individualistic sensibility.  “There’s such a history between humans and horses,” he reflects.  “Not only have they gotten us from one place to another, they’ve also worked our fields, fought our wars, and done so much of our work.  There’s a richness in that relationship.”  The exhibition’s two life-sized works and many smaller pieces explore this symbiosis while encapsulating Kern’s aesthetic, which curator Herman Mhire calls “at once poetic, sublime, disturbing, magnetic, and beautiful.”

In 2016 he reemerged with Arthur Kern:  The Surreal World of a Reclusive Sculptor at Ogden Museum of Southern Art, curated by John Berendt, author of Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil.  This revelatory show caused a sensation and earned praise in publications including The New York Times (“exquisite...  surreal...  striking...”), The New York Review (“...a mesmerizing show...”), and The Advocate (“...a thrilling sense of discovery...  a singular artist whose work deserves to be much better known...”)  Critics were fascinated by his challenging symbolic imagery, unique materials, and time- and labor-intensive process of casting wax molds with a highly responsive polyester resin.  This technique, which he adapted from the ancient lost-wax method of casting bronze, allows wax to be used much like clay, imparting a suppleness of expression that evokes Kern’s favorite historical sculptor, Auguste Rodin.  Chromatically, the equestrian series’s intricately nuanced surfaces result from myriad layers of translucent lacquers, applied as a patina.

The sculptures to be presented at Callan Contemporary are one-of-a-kind, not editions, and range across the length of Kern’s career.  The smaller pieces are bravura variations on a single original form, their surfaces alternately textural or preternaturally smooth, like marble or alabaster.  Although critics have placed these artworks in the lineages of Surrealism, postmodernism, and steampunk, the artist himself feels they spring from a syntax of “my own myths,” which bubble forth from the unconscious.  “More than one person has told me they think my work is about dichotomies,” he relates, “and I tend to agree...  Another thing I think influences my sculpture is philosophy, especially Zen Buddhism and the Existentialist idea that existence precedes thought.  I feel like the sculpture is an idea that I create as I’m working on it.  To have a fully conceived idea before I start a piece would seem wrong to me.  I like to explore and be surprised by what I find along the way.”

- by Richard Speer