FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Firth MacMillan

January 8—February 2, 2008

The Charles Cowles Gallery is pleased to announce its first exhibition for artist Firth MacMillan. MacMillan creates a large-scale sculptural installation that invokes a physical and emotional experience. Using the colloquial garden as a vehicle for exploring themes relating to physiological and psychological growth, this installation exploits the power of chroma and scale to unearth emotions and offers its audience the pleasure of escape.

MacMillan amasses intimate and monumental parts into pictorial and abstract compositions. Although hung on the wall much like paintings or photographs these ‘images' surpass the illusion of the two-dimensional and confront the viewer with their unequivocal presence. Contrasts in the elements reverberate, serving to amplify each; the subtle buds assert the boldness of grass, abstracted shapes articulate the specificity of minute detail, and a permanent material captures a moment that is temporal.

MacMillan handles her material, clay, with directness and a physicality that demonstrates a sense of both authority and discovery. She drags a tool through a massive block of clay to render a blade of grass, and then meticulously places this raw, torn form in an ever-evolving composition. Her voluminous objects allude to the floral and the flesh and mimic nature's ability to create infinite forms from a few basic elements. Experiments with pictorial space and ambiguous vantage points play with the viewer's perception.

From http://www.artinfo.com/news/story/26724/seven-enigmatic-sculptures/

Seven Enigmatic Sculptures

By Robert Ayers

Published: January 31, 2008

NEW YORK—Lately I've found myself enjoying a whole range of enigmatic sculptures in New York. Whether in the uptown museums or Chelsea galleries, there are some splendid exhibitions currently on view.

None of the works I've gathered here simply "sits on its ass," as Claes Oldenburg once put it: They clamber up walls, spill across floors, or pretend to be furniture, playthings, or manuscript pages. What they have in common is that they are static objects, or arrangements of objects, that await our contemplation: That is, they are all good old-fashioned sculptures, something that's become harder to find as enthusiasm for interdisciplinary and technology-driven work has grown. In almost every other regard, however, these seven works could not be more different.

Firth MacMillan, "Pink Grow Green" (2006)

Let's start at Charles Cowles, with a group of sculptures by Firth MacMillan, on view through February 2. Crafted in ceramic, MacMillan's pieces range from objects a few inches across to something like this one, "Pink Grow Green" (2006), which scrambles joyously across 43 feet of two adjoining 12-foot-high walls. MacMillan is a virtuoso ceramicist, and I found this piece lovely, entertaining, and subtly ribald, with pinkish-orange fruitlike bodies emerging (and floating away like balloons) from lush tropical foliage, but unmistakably hinting at human sexuality as well.