Jonathan Tucker
Casting Stones | Recent Sculpture

8 January, 2004 – 21 February, 2004
Reception: Thursday, 8 January, 2004 5:30 – 7:30 pm

Jonathan Tucker’s work inhabits the space between sculpture and painting. Using acrylic paint and modeling paste – a combination of acrylic polymer and marble dust – Tucker brushes, pours and casts to form shapes that he assembles and then paints. While some elements are naturalistic, often looking like rocks or moss, others are playful forms, abstract strokes and doodles. These sculptures draw inspiration in part from man's desire to control and represent nature, such as the meticulous arrangement in Japanese rock gardening. Tucker is equally compelled by the conventions of painting,
illusion and display: while some elements look naturalistic, each piece as a whole is clearly hand-crafted.

Narratives abound as each work offers many potential stories. In the work “Tether,” strands of colorful paint both acknowledge and defy gravity. Anthropomorphizing paint, the strands attach themselves to a rock-like host, growing upward despite nature’s pull. In other works, the paintings resemble landscapes with colorful, playful growths emerging, figures that waiver between abstraction and realism.

Jonathan Tucker received a MFA from the School of Visual Arts, New York. He lives and works in New York.