A dual-portrait of the artist's New York gallerist, realized at 85% scale, in an exceptional specimen of dramatically-figured, exuberantly-colored translucent onyx, selected for veination and contrasting opacity so as to differentiate the mirrored images, exhibiting a layered surface suffused with a 'sfumato' overlay of foliate relief and coincident miniscule circumferential terracing. The artist-designed integral / modular base / pedestal unit, its tapering parabolic sweep flowing into the sculpture's glass-polished flute stem (which, in turn, terminates in a silhouetted arboreal fringe), conceived in parallel with the sculpture, precisely-fabricated in stainless steel, limestone, acrylic-spray-lacquered aluminum and wood (and a variety of subsidiary materials) by a studio-coordinated consortium of disparate fabricators, is reminiscent, alternately, at its apex, of traditional 'socles' and Saarinen furniture pedestals. Here, in an attempt to reinvent and reinvigorate the sub-genre of romantic portrait sculpture, the artist has conjoined his signature fever-pitch execution intensity and a newfound conceptual tenderness. The resultant deceptively-diminutive bilaterally-symmetrical Janusian abstraction, created with deep reverence for and specific focus on the history of sculpture, makes an expansive case for the critical reconsideration of prevailing contemporary practice, while simultaneously probing both the subject's psychology and her complex relationship to the artist. The stony double-surrogate captures, in soft Galatean contravention of its obdurate materiality, a moment of poignant reflection, reflected.

2007 - 2008

Mexican Onyx

13-3/8 x 7-1/2 x 7-1/8 in (34 x 19.1 x 18.1 cm)