Page 50 - Studio International - September 1969

Bennie Efrat:

new work

Barbara Reise

I like art which poses problems for everyone
else but doesn't set out to solve them: art
whose implications outstrip one's compre-
hension at any one point of time in its confron-
tation. I like art which is not defensively
postured towards or against ideas, wit, visual
delectation, material permanence, 'the object',
`the environment', or humanity. I like art
whose context is (or wants to be) the whole
history of art and not just the styles and sales
of the last decade. I don't like a lot of 'art'.
But I very much like the art of Benni Efrat
now being exhibited in London's Grabowski
Gallery and at the Biennale des Jeunes in
Paris.
Efrat's work has a very real being as three-
dimensional objects made from such perma-
nent materials as aluminium, stainless steel,
brass, stove-enamel and synthetic cellulose
and fibreglass paints. But it is no more
`sculpture'— even in the sense in which
Robert Morris uses the word—than it is
`painting'. It was once both. Until about 1966
Efrat's work related separately to both cate- mathematicians would honour as 'elegance'.
gories, although he was known primarily as But the aspects of experience with which he is
a painter. Then in London he began working concerned are artistic and timeless, though
in stove-enamelled metal wall pieces which their isolation and almost ontological explora-
expanded an idea of 'painting' as three- tion are thoroughly contemporary.
dimensional object unifying material, plane, The seminal work in Efrat's recent activity is,
image, and colour. The paradoxical relation I believe, Broadcast. It is structurally a very
of these pieces to notions of both 'painting' self-contained piece; it forms the axis of
and 'sculpture' was elaborated in Target of artistic ideas in his London exhibition; it
1968. Its planarity (both literally, in sequen- synthesizes a number of his previous artistic
tial spatial separations, and metaphorically in interests and instigates new ideas continued
image-associations) worked ironically with its in his most recent piece, Information. Pri-
free-standing character. But the paradoxical marily it works as a literal, material shape for
wit of this piece still depended on traditional colour: colour not as painted film on a
media categorizations which, in Efrat's new separate material structure (as is the case with
work, are simply irrelevant. Caro, Annesley, Tucker, Olitski, and the later
Efrat's work now deals very directly with work of King), but as an integral part of both
space, material, line, plane, volume, and— the material of the piece (as in Judd) and of like their hues, 'natural' in being a property
especially— colour. It deals with isolated ob- the structure of its artistic experience. The of the physical length and tensile character of
jects and integrated environments. It uses 'colour-less' stainless steel triangular shape their core material: more— they actually move
tactile associations, tensile properties, meta- literally and inertly supports five lines—bands— in a wave-like pattern. The sensuous character
phors of systems and emotional sensations, planes of colours curving in a horizontal ten- of this colour wave-shape is raised to an al-
body kinesthesia, and even the drama of sile wave. The five colours allude to tradi- most erotic level by the fuzzy tactility of the
sequential experiences in its explorations of tional (`natural') rainbow hues; but this is fibreglass spray-paint surface and its contrast
potentially powerful visual situations. He him- effected by their sequence (from top to with the cold smoothness of the (coldly geo-
self thinks of it in terms relevant to pure bottom) of light-to-dark and warm-to-cold: a metrical) triangular 'support'. In Broadcast,
physics; his essay on 'Experiments in Visual sequence congruous with their rising-to- one reads colour (or its 'lack') as line, as plane,
Dynamics' (Art and Artists, September 1969) falling relative positions. Their wave-character as solid, as shape; one could express this
states his present general interests with what (almost a visual pun on colour-as-light) is, irony as both A:B:C:D and AB, AC, AD.