SYNCHRONICITY

Caprice Pierucci’s intricate compositions of sculpted and painted wood evoke the organic forms and progressive rhythms of nature. Rolling ocean waves, a wheat field rippling in a summer breeze, and the ever-changing patterns of birds flying in murmurations are among the synchronous rhythms at the heart of Synchronicity, the artist’s solo exhibition at Callan Contemporary. In the lineages of 20th Century abstraction and minimalism, her wall-based, pedestal-mounted, and hanging sculptures appear to shift and undulate as viewers move around them, imbuing the works with a kinetic, interactive dynamism. Delighting the eye with their interplay of graduated forms, shadows, negative space, and optical ambiguity, many pieces convey the impression of simultaneously opening and closing, projecting and receding.

The sculptures in Synchronicity are fashioned from pinewood, sanded smooth and washed with paint, then sealed with multiple layers of finish. Over a range of hues, from white and charcoal to jade and earth-red, they evoke a timeless, meditative quality. Pierucci is fascinated by ancient civilizations and geologic processes such as erosion and oxidation, which unfold over unfathomable stretches of geologic time. Within this conceptual framework, the artworks suggest the phenomena of change, transformation, and the sublimity of the natural world. For all their visual refinement, they are born of a strenuously physical process. “After the thinking and the composing,” she notes, “there’s a lot of cutting, carving, painting, more painting, grinding, gluing, finishing...Somewhere between what I’m seeing, what I’m inspired by, and what I’m feeling, there’s the challenge of: How am I going to construct this? How am I going to change my system of putting it together? I’m always trying to push the edge of what I know the wood can do.”

by Richard Speer