{"id":68198,"date":"2023-06-15T12:47:03","date_gmt":"2023-06-15T18:47:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/?p=68198"},"modified":"2023-06-28T01:16:07","modified_gmt":"2023-06-28T07:16:07","slug":"david-lecheminant-experiments-with-the-positive-and-negative-of-wood-and-geometry","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/david-lecheminant-experiments-with-the-positive-and-negative-of-wood-and-geometry\/","title":{"rendered":"David LeCheminant Experiments with the Positive and Negative of Wood and Geometry"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Installation view of David LeCheminant’s “What Keeps Me Up at Night, in the George S and Dolores Dor\u00e9 Eccles Gallery on Salt Lake Community College\u2019s South City Campus<\/p><\/div>\n

“Regina is a compact, trapezoid-shaped tower, like a slender version of a ziggurat, the temple structure that spread across the Fertile Crescent three thousand years BC, which almost certainly inspired the story of the Tower of Babylon. Where ziggurats were made of sun-dried clay bricks, however, this tower is made entirely of wood stained a dark red that verges on black. Its structure consists of vertical bars that shoot up the sides like buttresses, without interruption, adding to the feeling of great height \u2014 in spite of its tabletop size. The exception to its vertical orientation is a set of short, horizontal bars that resemble steps, ascending from the center front up to a narrow window a little more than halfway up. The way the entire piece invokes a sacred building lends this opening the feel of a grand ceremonial doorway into another dimension. Whether \u201cRegina\u201d refers to the reigning queen, rather than the capital of a Canadian Province, isn\u2019t a decision the viewer is required to make. The stable figure and suggestion of a window that frames another perspective could be a metaphor for royalty, while due to its location in the far North, the figure of Saskatchewan, despite its four square corners, actually tapers on the map.<\/h4>\n

In total there are 25 sculptures in What Keeps Me Up at Night<\/em>, David LeCheminant\u2019s<\/a> exhibit in the George S and Dolores Dor\u00e9 Eccles Gallery on Salt Lake Community College\u2019s South City Campus. They\u2019re entirely wood, cut and assembled with finishes ranging from natural to highly polished, colors left natural or stained and painted \u2014 though in a few places manufactured woods, like wafer board, provide accents. The show immediately invokes the improvised headgear worn by Michelangelo, Goya, and others to hold candles so they could continue their art-making into pre-electric studio nights. But it also refers, in this case, to Le Cheminant\u2019s anxiety that his largely self-directed artistic activities come without authorization from any art community. Some of them stand, like \u201cRegina,\u201d on their own; others sprout feet or hang on walls. Some are conventional, while others are hybrids. It seems safe to theorize that these are all the product of continual experimentation: freely associated, one from the next, in a process of sequential exploration of design and construction techniques.<\/h4>\n
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David LeCheminant, “Cumulonimbus”<\/p><\/div>\n

Some sculptors require a wall to support their works, mechanically and aesthetically, while others struggle to create forms that are not free-standing, meant to be seen in the round. LeCheminant can make both. The most striking and ground-breaking piece here may be \u201cCumulonimbus,\u201d which hangs on a wall and consists of gray, cubical lozenges that seem to explode from its center and create perspective views that defy being held in place by eye and mind. Whether it meets the definition \u2014 of a cloud such as a thunderhead that feels menacing \u2014\u00a0 is for the viewer to decide. Overall, the titles, while creative, seem more for identifying the disparate works than meant to dictate meanings.<\/h4>\n

Geometry is often part of abstraction, and just as often not. In these sculptures we often see mathematical forms used on at least two scales simultaneously. A work like \u201cEveryman\u201d or \u201cSpitfire\u201d is shaped overall like a diamond \u2014 another variety of trapezoid \u2014 while its components include rectangles, triangles, and other shapes. In the works that hang on walls, a species of wood or a color or its shape may relate to or combine with other pieces around it. The mind seeks such patterns through the eye in all that we encounter in nature. Some of the parts have been carved, but whether the artist carved them or found them isn\u2019t clear. Le Cheminant doesn\u2019t aim for obvious likenesses, but sometimes abstraction can\u2019t help invoking things seen in the world: except for their transparency, both \u201cPassage\u201d and \u201cMonument\u201d might recall the ever-evocative bas-reliefs of Louise Nevelson with their repeating, suggestive interiors.<\/h4>\n
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David LeCheminant, “Passage”<\/p><\/div>\n

Violins are usually played with a bow, though their strings can be plucked like a guitar\u2019s. Painters tend to prefer brushes, though some use a palette knife for a different effect. LeCheminant’s use of wood primarily features its linear qualities, which give his sculptures a graphic dimension in addition to sculpture\u2019s defining ability to organize and energetically fill space. He, too, on occasion employs a contrasting technique. In \u201cAsymmetry of October,\u201d often the individual pieces of wood are wide enough in proportion to their length that the grain patterns, normally a part of the stick\u2019s linear quality, become not one- but two-dimensional fields. Here the adjacent, stick-like elements assume a supportive role, emphasized by the softening effect of having been given rounded cross-sections. A tangential thought occurs, that perhaps what keeps this artist awake at night has to do with the limits of a material that begins by generously lending a linear quality to the work, but ends by imposing it almost exclusively. What David LeCheminant might well fear is the point where a new work looks like just more of the same. That\u2019s not a problem here, but how much longer can his imagination find new gestures and vocabulary elements, and at what point might a major break become necessary? Based on the success of What Keeps Me Up at Night<\/em>, there\u2019s every reason to anticipate what he will do then.<\/h4>\n
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David LeCheminant, “Assymetry of October”<\/p><\/div>\n

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David LeCheminant: What Keeps Me Up at Night, George S. & Dolores Dore Eccles Art Gallery<\/a>, Salt Lake Community College, Salt Lake City, through July 13<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

“Regina is a compact, trapezoid-shaped tower, like a slender version of a ziggurat, the temple structure that spread across the Fertile Crescent three thousand years BC, which almost certainly inspired the story of the Tower of Babylon. Where ziggurats were made of sun-dried clay bricks, however, this tower […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":847,"featured_media":68202,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_piecal_is_event":false,"_piecal_start_date":"","_piecal_end_date":"","_piecal_is_allday":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[19,14],"tags":[3066],"class_list":["post-68198","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-exhibition_reviews","category-visual_arts","tag-david-lecheminant"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/06\/Gallery-perspective-scaled.jpeg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-05-30 10:53:11","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/68198","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/847"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=68198"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/68198\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":68205,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/68198\/revisions\/68205"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/68202"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=68198"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=68198"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=68198"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}