Chelsea Exhibition Reviews: Rosebud Contemporary, Paula Cooper, Fredericks & Freiser, Berry Campbell and more

Monumental sculpture exhibitions are always a huge deal - now multiply that by tenfold when the sculptor in question is an “unabashed feminist” who produced enormous works endowed with a cornucopia of thematic layers. Enter the late, great Mary Ann Unger (American, 1945 - 1998). 

 

Across the Bering Strait was epic on both a physical and thematic level. Berry Campbell partnered with the Mary Ann Unger Estate to conceptualize a re-engagement with Unger’s titular magnum opus of sculptural installations that had first been exhibited at the Trans Hudson Gallery in Jersey City, New Jersey in 1994. 

 

Many of the sculptures on view resemble enlarged versions of natural elements and parts of the human body, from colorful pebbles to bones, respectively. The Across the Bering Strait installation in the back gallery features a grouping of multiple hydrocal over steel sculptures whose horizontal arrangements at first seem to resemble cannons. However, a prolonged period of looking and perambulation amongst these works felt like these could have been the fossilized remains of a prehistoric creature appearing as they would deep in the soil. It felt very humbling, as if to say that my own human existence is small and insignificant in comparison to that of a gargantuan creature of millennia-past.

 

Though Across the Bering Strait was the centerpiece, the exhibition brought together a well-rounded body of small, medium, and large-scale sculptures from Unger’s career, specifically works from the 1970s through her death in 1998. Basket Piece (1997 - 1998) is a really excellent evocation of Unger’s background - beyond art - in anthropology and ethnography as the ribbed form she chose for this sculptural basket seems like an homage to the material culture of an indigenous society such as the time-honored basket-weaving traditions of Indigenous tribes in the Southwestern United States. 

 

As a bonus, watercolor and graphite on paper works were also included to visually explain the sophistication and extensive planning that went into the preparation of Unger’s complex sculptures. 

 

Though the exhibition has since ended, it is never too late for one to experience Unger's sculptures as an accompanying exhibition catalogue was published featuring scholarly essays by Independent Curator Glenn Adamson and Independent Curator Jess Wilcox.