Off the wall

Archeology for the modern world

by Leon Nigrosh

ED SMITH: A GRAND BATTLE At the University Gallery, Clark University, through April 11.

Like Phidias's Elgin marbles, constructed in the 5th century for the Parthenon and now housed at London's British Museum, New York artist Ed Smith's imposing metopes also recount stories of warfare. But unlike those magnificent humanist carvings by the Greek Classical sculptor, who also designed the colossal monument of Zeus at Olympia (one of the Seven Wonders of the World), Smith's work hovers near total abstraction.

The provocative title of Smith's current exhibit at Clark's University Gallery, "A Grand Battle," rings true on several levels. In this post-Cold War era, artists have few international confrontations to glorify or repudiate, so Smith has chosen his own life as the battleground. "It's about my trials and tribulations, being messed over, falling in love, having babies, failures in the studio, successes, and so on," he says.

The act of creating his high-relief wall panels is somewhat akin to a military skirmish as well. Smith is a disenchanted painter who realized the folly of spending hours, if not months, attempting to make a flat surface appear three-dimensional.

So he's turned to the construction material Structolite -- a particularly dense form of plaster aggregate. Mixing, pouring, and slathering it out to make the base plinth, he then throws gobs of Structolite onto a stiffened surface. Cutting, carving, and sanding each image requires hours of intense physical activity. "I'm a working guy. I like the spontaneity," Smith says. "I like to use real materials to make real things, I like to wallow in the stuff."

The completed work shows the results of such frenzied yet concentrated activity. His Birth of the Warrior weighs in at more than 500 pounds, yet its floating images have a certain delicacy and refinement of form. Close up, we can see the surrounding ripples caused by the heavy balls as they were thrust into the viscous base, along with the trowel marks and scrapings made when he refined different areas. From afar, this jumble of structures resolves itself into a sophisticated view of a mythic winged character blossoming above a distant mountain range. By leaving this work in its natural off-white color, Smith relies on shadows to emphasize the image's contours.

A somewhat more obvious version of warriors being born appears in Smith's suite The War. Here we see skulls and limbs afloat above a smoldering volcano; but there is no menace apparent.

Smith says that his sleeping children serve as inspiration. "They're like sleeping gods. Looking at them, I suddenly understood the Greek myths." In fact, the only free-standing work in this exhibit is a six-foot-tall Structolite, steel, and wood abstract figure, Anna, the Warrior, in honor of his then six-year-old daughter.

For his most recent series of small wall pieces, Smith has returned to pigmenting the Structolite, a 9000-year-old decorative method he originally used in the early '80s during his transition from two- to three-dimensional work. This time, instead of trying to direct our attention to a specific portion of the sculpture, he has given these pieces the appearance of archaeological finds scorched by time. A series of nine small plaques, Small Suite for Pam, creates an abstract narrative when we examine it in sequence. The teeth and fingers, for example, which have become more evident than in earlier works, serve only to hint at the piece's symbolic content. But whatever their meaning, they are the next step in Smith's continuing development of his metaphorical vocabulary.

Whether figural realism will ever supplant his abstraction remains a question, but Smith says that he "wants to make something real, that takes up real space, like us. I want to make things that must be investigated and confronted, not just passed by or turned to the wall." If viewers will come away feeling the same close kinship with Smith's challenging works, they will certainly discern a heroic presence reminiscent of the centuries-old -- but still revered -- Phidian depiction of Olympic conflict.

The gallery is open Wednesday through Sunday from noon to 5 p.m. Call 793-7113.