Beyond the standard art historical idea of a school or a movement lies the territory suggested by significant aesthetic trends that seemingly exceed conscious intention. ORGANIC, the current show at Sullivan Goss, An American Gallery, offers a snapshot of one such sprawling and manifold tendency in contemporary art. “Organic,” one of the 21st century’s most popular (and unreliable) words, refers in this case to the blurring of boundaries and the celebration of overlaps between art objects and the shapes and materials of the natural world.
The show gives 23 artists a chance to revel in the complexity of perception that underlies our sense of what is, and what is not, natural. Perhaps it’s the impact of climate change, which seems to call so many of our prior certainties into question, that has brought this to the fore. Yet judging from the timeframe of ORGANIC, which reaches as far back as the middle of the 20th century, anxiety about nature has been with us for much longer than we might at first imagine.
It’s certainly there in the direct metal sculpture of Harry Bertoia, whose “Double Bush with Triple Tips (c. 1977)” radiates a certain menace. Fashioned of bronze and copper, this bush would easily survive a wildfire, with or without you. Nearby on the wall, an untitled wood sculpture by Charles Arnoldi from approximately the same era — 1974 — exists in a perfectly calibrated balance between the organic and the geometric, suggesting once again that nature and artifice can coexist.