we are just so fucking fortunate to have Richard Hunt living and working in Chicago...
He has a one man show at david weinberg here in Chicago that runs through May 30th, and if you don’t know all that much about him, it’s worth a visit...
but if you DO know something about his work...you’re going to be delighted...
I was assigned the task of writing an essay about a two man show at the now defunct Terra Museum back in 1992...
It featured the work of Richard Hunt...the abstract poet of bronze... along with the work of Richmond Barthé...another Chicago sculptor.... someone who could be called the romantic figurative poet of bronze...and both men depicted the real African Americans...not some figment of any white man’s imagination....
To view their work together was to be allowed a generous glimpse of the real African American spirit in a way that movies or novels or possibly even biographies have never done....
And coming now from a Traditional Asian Medicine education...I can say that they captured the Qi of African Americans in bronze...
The dynamism and muscularity of Richard Hunt’s abstracts in combination with the poetry of Richmond Barthé’s literal and abstract expressionist figures made for a powerful experience of education for me as a white man...and numinosity for me as an artist and critic...
And now today...I spent time paying attention to some of Richard Hunt’s more recent works and metaphors...
An hour in the gallery taking photos, identifying works, and then writing my personal insights about the metaphors I felt drawn to left me both exhausted and exhilarated.
It also left me with another room full of larger pieces and works on paper to study...
and so until I complete that study, I won’t be able to write a complete (and Virgoan) review with confidence...
But I can say that the image detail above...the one I've included here, is one small edge of a smaller piece entitled Sculptured Place II...
The piece is only 11 inches tall but looks almost like a fanciful combination of mosque, cathedral, and Frank Geary opera house...
And the form above is something of a beautiful liquid mud flat...as if this house of worship were placed exactly on the tidal flats of human conception...
Although the likelihood, knowing Richard Hunt’s usual turn of metaphor, is that this perhaps harmoniously integrated symbol of man’s natural religion / religious spirit has grown up gloriously out of the beautiful rich mud right along with him...and wasn’t just somehow placed there...
And okay...I’ll leave it all there for now...
but I've got so much more to share about my sense of Richard Hunt’s bronze poetry and metaphor...
if you wanna hear (and see) it....
And of course if you don’t...I’m still gonna have to talk about him and his work...
There’s a piece of my own soul that he’s generously pointed out to me...
And I would just be a fool to ignore that....
