If you prefer your art to be weighty—literally and figuratively—then you’ll love the exhibition of large-scale, galvanized-steel works by Japanese-American sculptor Isamu Noguchi, who was a towering figure of 20th-century modernism.
In Isamu Noguchi: Metal the Mirror, nine objects from 1982 and 1983 explore themes of duality through a collection of sculptures that combine the traditional with the modern; the industrial with the natural.
Of course, as a practical matter, it’s quite a task to ship and mount an exhibition that includes steel objects as tall as seven feet. Getting it here was made possible by Art Bridges, the nonprofit founded by Walmart heiress Alice Walton to expand access to American art.
Noguchi, born in Los Angeles in 1904 to an American mother and Japanese father, spent his childhood in Japan and often traveled between countries. Navigating cultures informed his “oneness” worldview and inspired not only sculpture but also gardens, architecture and set designs.
It was sculpture, however, that earned the most notice (and the most acclaim) for Noguchi. Robert Hughes, chief art critic for Time magazine, crowned the artist “the preeminent American sculptor” in 1980, eight years before Noguchi’s death.
The Noguchi show is the Mennello’s first large-scale sculpture exhibition and the first exhibition of Noguchi’s work since a 2006 show at UCF. Known for his work with stone, the artist found another opportunity for expression in steel.
“Stone is depth, metal the mirror,” he said. The pieces, dipped in boiling zinc, reflect surrounding space and even viewers—whom Shannon Fitzgerald, the museum’s executive director, hopes will find “suggestions of themselves in the reflective, organically shaped and referential sculptures.”
