SFAQ_issue_sixteen

RANDY COLOSKY
By DAVID CUNNINGHAM
In the four years since Secret Handshake (his revelatory first major solo show, curated
by Tracy Wheeler at the late great Bruno Mauro’s much missed Ampersand Gallery),
Randy Colosky has steadfastly produced an astounding variety of works in an array of
media and formats, including public art projects and even a full sized, fully functioning
“grow room” (Air and Space Museum, 2012) for the San Francisco Arts Commission
Gallery. Viewed at short range the multivalent results of his investigations can be
confounding, but when observed from a distance, consistent patterns and directions
emerge. Two ongoing and distinct bodies of work “graph” strongly in this matrix—his
by now instantly recognizable “pattern iteration” drawings and more quietly, a series of
ceramic works that Colosky has been steadily producing since 2010.
Ceramics have been at the core of Colosky’s creative life since he was a teenager.
Something about the fluid and unpredictable nature of the elemental yet highly technical
processes involved in ceramic production lends itself to invention and innovation as
well as risk-taking. Transformation and flux are hallmarks of casting, firing, and forming
all of which are subject to high rates of failure and loss. Physics, chemistry, art, craft,
and technology are all inextricably linked, and concept and process are in a constant
state of fusion and overlap. Colosky’s extensive experience in this field, coupled with
his deep interest in science, art history, and Zen practice illuminates recurrent themes
of transcendence and transformation that suffuse his work.
Colosky often deploys basic unit materials in repetitive or iterative structures that
evoke concepts of “emergence” and “spontaneous order.” The basic building block
for all of his recent ceramic pieces is a “found” or ready-made industrial engineered
honeycomb Cordierite ceramic unit typically used in catalytic converters for
automobiles. Cordierite is a structural ceramic with a high resistance to thermal shock.
Completing a satisfyingly recursive loop (a frequent marker of his quietly humorous
and witty practice), these properties also make it ideal for use in building kilns. The first
piece Colosky exhibited using this material— “The Shape of Things to Come (2010)”
composed of four honeycomb blocks joined together and then carved to form a Torus
shaped ring, delivers its own quiet joke. The converter is re-born as a wheel.
“Karesansui (2013)” is the largest and most recent piece in this series. Like all of
Colosky’s work, it is distilled, abstract, and deeply vested in its own materiality. The
title directly references Japanese “dry landscape” or Zen gardens, specifically those of
the Muromachi period (the golden age of Zen Buddhism), but the piece itself is also
highly suggestive and allusive. Originally exhibited with a painted backdrop reminiscent
of the colored clay wall, which is an important element of the famous garden at Ryoanji
in Kyoto, it now stands alone. Conjuring further associations with the Chinese
scholar’s stone (and to a lesser extent Japanese Suiseki) the piece does in fact meet
all the classic requirements of a Tang Dynasty scholar’s stone, including: thinness,
openness, perforations, wrinkling, resemblance to a figure or landscape, texture, glossy
or moist looking surface and notable origin (see above). Of course, the point is not
to replicate or appropriate but to activate and reinvigorate the form as a vehicle or
tool for reflection, contemplation, and consciousness. In this sense, and in the broadest
definition of the term, the work is inherently “technological.”
Unlike the earlier monolithic “Barbican (2011)” and bi-partite “Black Magic Mountain
(2013),” Karesansui is punctured by seven large holes. The honeycomb base units
are assembled and stacked in two planes lending it extra dimension and an animated
quality that is suggestive of the figurative in spite of the piece’s resolute abstractness.
At approximately seven feet tall and four feet wide it is still within human scale and
the slightly offset foot-like elements at the base establish a subtle contrapposto stance,
which reinforces a pervasive sense of animistic energy evocative of Shinto Kami. In
another reference (likely unintended by the artist) the “pose” and swirling contours of
the carved surfaces that differentiate both sides of the piece bring to mind the paired
Niō guardians or Kongōrikishi by Unkei at Tōdai-ji in Nara (though they are four times
larger and carved of wood).
Colosky’s work, however, is never literal and first impressions are invariably upended
and overturned. Using a favored device of the artist, the piece operates on a polarity
or dualism. What appears to be solid, matte black stone turns out to be composed
mostly of voids. Depending on one’s vantage point whole sections can appear almost
transparent, with an otherworldly immanence or glow that appears to almost be a
source of light within the piece. This is an optical effect first explored in the earlier
Barbican piece but, here dramatically heightened by the high contrast dark finish and
paradoxically emphasized by the negative space of the seven large voids carved through
the sculpture which in certain lighting conditions and depending on your vantage
point can appear almost solid in proximity to the transparent blocks (suggesting
an awareness and interest in the Japanese concept of Ma). That finish was achieved
by combining up to six different colored lacquers and metallic coatings and when
combined with the surface topographies of the textured, serrated, carved edges of
the exposed honeycomb cell structure lends the piece a quietly futuristic aura (and
possibly also alludes to the concept of a “black body”—which in physics is considered
a ‘perfect emitter’) that lifts it out of the referential and stakes a claim for its own
autonomy. Once again, in the words of his fellow artist and friend Sarah Smith, “he
takes something rigid and uniform and gives it organic life.”
Upcoming projects include a 140-foot-long, digitally produced mural (a new development
in his Iteration drawing series) for the barrier wall surrounding the Central Subway
Moscone Station construction site for the San Francisco Arts Commission. Later this
summer Colosky will install a monumental new outdoor ceramic piece as part of a
group sculpture show at Paradise Ridge Winery, and in November, he will have his
second solo show with Chandra Cerrito Gallery in Oakland.
Karesansui, 2013. 84x48x24 inches. Photograph by Jesse Chandler. Courtesy of the artist.