Liz Larner

Take the wobbly, uncanny shape of Two or Three or Something: twelve approximately equal sections of steel rod, each wrapped in paper washed with yellow watercolor, would form the edges of a cube were they straightened out and set at perpendicular angles, yet the sculpture, poised unstably on the ground on three corners, appears to have shimmied itself out of the confines of that ideal geometry. It also manages to establish volume without mass or density, existing on the pressure point between presence and absence, or between the implied space it demarcates and the larger space in which it exists and which is shared by the viewer. The mixed-media work evokes drawing through its linearity and the artist’s use of paper, while the bright watercolor suggests the painting tradition. It challenges the requirement that artwork occupy either two or three dimensions. The viewer’s movement around the piece maps a terrain of perception in which boundaries are permeable and implied volumes shift, and thus delivers the “something” named in its title.