Kim Cridler: Bittersweet Beatury

摘要

LIGHT filtering THROUGH fragile beeswax leaves hints at the tenuousness of individual living things, while illuminating the capacity of life in general to wend its way ever onward in defiance of obstacles. A distillation of the most fundamental dynamic in nature, Kim Cridler's Field Study 16: Felled Mulberry traces the cycle of life and death through the protagonists of a tree stump and a fresh sprig that, rising in trembling lines of resilience, forms a vignette of transcendence. Atop the stump, beside the sprig, and drawing symbolic potential from these natural forms rests the framework of a vessel. An obvious analogue, rather than a functional object, this skeletal vessel yields itself readily to the embrace of metaphor, hinting at complex relationships between human-made objects and the elusive concepts of time, mortality, and eternity. As in all of Cridler's sculptures and installations, the vessel's incapacity as a literal container heightens its conceptual resonance.