Eugene Jardin, Portrait of a Sculptor

A Film by Rina Sherman

16 mm, 7 mn, 1983. Production : Art Cinématographique Artisanal Distribution: Label K

Portrait of the late Eugene Jardin, South African born sculptor, who lived on the US West coast, filmed during a return visit to Johannesburg in 1983 for an exhibition of a series of portraits of David Hockney, Woody Allen, Jody Foster and the likes...

David Hockney

Also on display is a series of painted fiberglass sculptures by Eugene Jardin, a South African artist now living in Los Angeles. Jardin's grotesque fusion of human and animal forms exploits art historical motifs drawn from Assyrian and Greek mythology (hunters and their prey), as well as Etruscan funerary sculpture. The works' overt primitivism masks an analytical undercurrent, that of expressing emotional states through an ongoing sculptural vocabulary (kinetic distortion, idiosyncratic balance and spatial parameters) as well as such archetypal concerns as power and the subconscious. The work is more successful conceptually than aesthetically, largely because Jardin cloaks his historical sources in an overly accessible Pop sensibility that tends to undermine the integrity of his vision. (Michael Kohn, 313 N. Robertson Blvd., to Feb. 8.)

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