{"id":16528,"date":"2013-01-24T11:33:35","date_gmt":"2013-01-24T17:33:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/?p=16528"},"modified":"2018-09-06T22:06:24","modified_gmt":"2018-09-07T04:06:24","slug":"cal-vestals-kinetic-creations-at-phillipss-dibble-gallery","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/cal-vestals-kinetic-creations-at-phillipss-dibble-gallery\/","title":{"rendered":"Cal Vestal’s Kinetic Creations at Phillips’s Dibble Gallery"},"content":{"rendered":"
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C5 by Cal Vestal<\/p><\/div>\n

Because kinetic sculptures are often seen in communal places — at Trax stations, in civic centers, parks, libraries — they too often assume associations of banality. Thankfully, the exhibit of small, intimate works by Cal Vestal now showing at the Dibble Gallery in Phillips, reconstruct the essential uniqueness of the special qualities and the possibilities for beauty in kinetic sculpture.<\/p>\n

The sculptures, curled and winding shapes made out of extremely thin sheets of metal, frequently in opposing tones of silver and bright golds, blues and reds, vary in form from the suggestively representational to the completely abstracted. Be they wire constructs or balancing mobiles hanging weightlessly from the ceiling, or sturdier creations with curled and winding fingers of shaped metal spinning on a rod, they are simple while being fantastical, formal while being spontaneous, and always whimsical while being admirably evolved in design and structure.<\/p>\n

Each piece takes on aesthetic qualities that give it an individual suggestive character, sparking in the viewer a range of sensibilities.\u00a0 These shapes, that spin or sway slightly as the elements dictate, are created with a lightness of touch and a quickness of mind that belies the sense of weight we usually associate with metal, lending to the works a sense of airy amusement.<\/p>\n

Responding to these works, the gallery-goer might take their cues from the aesthetics of the early 20th<\/sup> Century Modernists which by now have become part of our communal vocabulary. The liberty of line of Cocteau\u2019s paper or sculptural works can be felt in Vestal\u2019s delicate edges. Picasso\u2019s abstract animal sculptures were as free in spirit in form as Vestal\u2019s \u201cSandy\u2019s Cat.\u201d And the sense of balanced harmony that gave strength to Calder\u2019s impossibly balanced mobiles are felt here, not just in Vestals own mobiles, but in all the works.<\/p>\n