Chris Duncan
Recent Work: Drawings & Sculpture
Union College Faculty Exhibition
January 29 - March 6, 1998
 

Untitled, bronze, 1996

When you look at Chris Duncan's drawings, you are confronted by mass - you sense the physical presence of his sculpture. Yet the drawings in this show are not preparatory sketches, they are not preliminary exercises on paper intended to culminate in a finished piece of bronze or steel and plaster; they are works that stand assertively on their own. Still, these large palimpsests, with their labored marks, insistent and searching, and their broad planes, richly layered, velvety and deep, were obviously wrought by hands that know volume, that shape mass. their subject matter is a series of forms: simple, elementary, even, solid and unadorned, yet never static. In a peculiar off-camber equilibrium they boldly inhabit the picture plane, unsettled and alive, graced by the refined reserve of their author's chromatic choices and undergirded by his sure command of the medium.

- Francis Di Tommaso, Director of the Visual Arts Museum
  at the School of Visual Arts
 

All Or Nothing At All
bronze, 1996

 

Untitled
steel and plaster, 1996

       Drawing and sculpture have always been related in my work. The drawings aren’t sketches or diagrams from which to build directly; instead they are a means to formulate and record possibilities.

        When I begin a sculpture, an underlying structure of steel allows me to generate forms quickly and improvisationally. Sometimes the steel alone forms the finished sculpture, or I may add plaster and found objects over the steel. In recent years, I’ve cast bronzes from these plaster and steel pieces. 

        My drawing process is similar to what happens when I make sculpture. It requires a physical involvement, and erasing or scraping away is as important as adding. To preserve a quality of immediacy I often work in a series. I’m interested in how the making process helps determine the final shape of the work. Later I go back, edit, and fine tune. 

         The most recent works on paper were made during a three-month stay in China this fall. I started off with my usual materials-heavy drawing paper, charcoal, and so on–but quickly switched to working with brushes, Chinese ink, and large sheets of very thin Chinese paper. Working with these light, flexible materials, and incorporating color, proved liberating. Drawing with the brush was like making one of the steel sculptures, but more immediate, and almost effortless. I couldn’t erase on the rice paper, but I could build up many layers of line and color, like building up the surface of a sculpture. So, some of the Chinese drawings are like studies for sculpture, while others read more as screens of giddy calligraphy.

-Chris Duncan, Union College, December 1997
 

   
Head, bronze, 1997