Casey Kaplan
Matthew Ronay
What to See in Art Galleries Right Now
June 6, 2019
by Roberta Smith
Matthew Ronay’s electric show at Casey Kaplan reveals an artist at the height of his powers. Mr. Ronay has been arranging small shapes made of carved and stained wood into aggregate sculptures for nearly two decades, and they’ve always been appealing. But the best works in the exhibition, “Betrayals of and by the Body,” go beyond appealing in their brilliant colors, myriad textures, suggestive forms and the ease and delicacy with which they fit together.
The frugal use of flocking, which adds a velvety opaque surface that contrasts with the smooth, glowing wood, unsettles perception, adding another dimension. See the stand-alone ganglia flocked dark red in “Engorged Follicle (Corazonin).”
Analogies run rampant in these pieces — to body organs, exotic plants or sea life with occasional hints of architecture, food or wet clay. And the shapes also enact tense little comedic dramas and interactions in the ways they lean, droop or are stacked.
The orange and purple shapes of “Flexed Poised Breached Swollen” are a case in point. Sex, a fight or simple cell division could be just around the corner. Yet they are present — even commanding — as abstract objects. Their highly artificial palette and dimensionality update Surrealism (Yves Tanguy’s paintings, especially) and late Guston. As with the ceramic sculptures of Ken Price, Mr. Ronay is exploiting his means to their full extent, and it is thrilling to see.