Enrique Polanco is the finest sculptor since Benvenuto Cellini. He is from the Caribbean. He is elegant

Result #1

, but has been out of fashion for twenty years. He has been living in Switzerland, and has had one of his first formal exhibitions here. This is his first one-man show. There are three large pieces, each of a much larger square, several of which are arranged in a semicircular formation. These pieces are not made to be seen. They are soft and flexible. They are sometimes heavy-looking. They are very fragile, but not coarse; they are not difficult to handle. They are the effects of a remarkable integration of materialism with strong imagination. Polanco focuses his attention on the symbolic, psychological, even spiritual aspects of the world, and makes the most of the qualities of materials and the manners and conventions of the art he uses. The material he works with is of the most sensuous, warm, and chemical sort. It is applied generously, with a very wide hand. It is used with such a fluid and unrefined touch that it retains its own splendor. As in the women of olden days, Polanco draws his figures with a feeling of intense artistic ambition.The sculptures are taken from Mexican street carvings, and are very beautiful and complex. The viewer is led through the motion of the sculptural space to a thick, heavy zone of highly coagulated ink and ink. It is this zone of coagulation and the heavy ink which, in Polancos sculptural art, has been used most consistently. This zone of coagulation also includes a particularly large and unusual space, in which the waves of ink start to form themselves. The coagulation and interweaving of the materials gives these pieces a sense of vitality and fragility which other sculpture would be hard put to capture.

Result #2

Enrique Polanco is the finest sculptor since Benvenuto Cellini. He is from the Caribbean. He is elegant and full of life, and he is a master of color. The beauty of his work is combined with the primacy of the image, which is associated with human presence.This exhibition marked the first exhibition of the new Mexican sculptor Fernanda Jardín-Ruiz in New York. The last show she did in Mexico City before she died in 1977, at age 63, was called Ciudad Juarez. The installation she did in the plaza of that city, entitled El Monumento de la Resistencia del Real (The Monument of the Real), was quite different from what she usually does. She used a heavy metal grinder and a heavy wooden doll with large holes at the top, which were in the shape of tools. She crushed the blocks in a massive manner and filled them with gravel. The gravel from which the grinder was made appeared as sculpture and had a deep dimension that were interspersed among the blocks and grinder. The sculpture was a black-and-white image of the same black-and-white.In the current work, the abstraction of the figure has been replaced by a psychological dimension that is also present in the figures that Jardín-Ruiz has produced over the past twenty years. A sense of anxiety pervades these works. The heavy-handedness of the destruction of the objects suggests a violent aggression, and the way in which the gravel and the grinder have been used calls to mind an ancient tomb. The original sculptures, still largely intact, are now cast in a new bronze and steel. The grinder, again in the form of a heavy tool, stands for the separation of private and public space.Jardín-Ruizs work has shown a marked affinity with certain artists of the 70s, such as Ed Ruscha, Barbara Kruger, and Judith Scott. But the concept of the woman that animates her work has always been connected to a specific gender identity.

Result #3

Enrique Polanco is the finest sculptor since Benvenuto Cellini. He is from the Caribbean. He is elegant, but he does not hide his beauty. He is also a mystic, and he has a great desire to communicate. I cannot speak from personal experience, but I know of no one else who was as inspired as he. He draws his ideas from a Caribbean source, to meet the demands of the world. He has very many influences. He has learned many languages. And, finally, he is all about the creative process. His work is based on the traditional teaching of nature. He is in touch with all cultures. He is also conscious of his ability to touch. This is what he has always been; he has never lost the contact that made him. The authority that always pervades his work is reaffirmed by the fact that it is always renewed.He talks about the communion of culture and nature; he speaks of making contact with the unknown. His methods include gestures that transform real objects into imaginary, of using everyday materials, of transforming experience into a vehicle of creative expression. These include paints, scrap materials, rubber, embroidery, iron, paper, ribbon, paper, foil, and paper plates. He creates a surprising range of materials, based on the elements that are normally used in traditional methods. There are forms that are based on game pieces, such as shells, shells and rubber, but also objects that express the most profound aspects of the human being. This is the most challenging, in my opinion, since it is almost impossible to complete a whole piece. The point is to create a touch that is not dependent on visual aspects. That is the point of making a beautiful piece. But this is difficult, for I feel that the visual aspects are not adequately represented by the materials. A picture is a fragile, precarious thing, and therefore can be utilized in a different way. The artist must try to find a balance between the two parts of his work, between the objects that signify and the images that constitute them. For he cannot allow them both to disappear.

Result #4

Enrique Polanco is the finest sculptor since Benvenuto Cellini. He is from the Caribbean. He is elegant and clean, precise and yet, to my eye, indecisive. The castings and paintings of other sculptors—for instance, the one of Margherita Delaunay, who has recently made some dramatic changes in her work—are often sold as sculpture, but, in fact, they are relatively lightweight, unlike Caravaggios heavy sculptures, which are enormous, and they are, to a lesser degree, independent of the material and structural rigor of the metal. I am impressed by their visual sensuality, but this sensuality has remained ambivalent. This ambivalence is evidenced not only in the piece of sculpture that hangs on the wall, where it seemed to be floating, but in the rubric that defines the piece, which, after the divagating of the piece, becomes the piece, as in the case of Caravaggios art.This ambivalence is so apparent that it would be unfair to diminish the quality of this work, but there are other, deeper factors to consider. For one thing, this is a métier so densely covered with sculpture that the vast bulk of it is in fact sculptural. But this richness is really the height of obscurantism: the ostensible subject matter of the piece is invested with such complex, very strong color. Moreover, these are colors that, for the most part, are meant to evoke the richness of color that can be found in the varnish and glitter of precious metals and their substitutes that dot the cobalt surfaces of much sculptural art. (The last thing one wants to do, with color this deep, is to exhibit it in a natural or industrial setting.) Beyond that, this materialist coloring has been fashioned into a substance that, moreover, is endowed with an attractive warmth that can have an erotic and sexual charge.

Result #5

, precise, and precise. He uses cubism, and in a Cubist manner he is interested in the structure of the sculpture. This Cubism is complemented by his drawing and spray techniques. He uses his own unmistakable marks, and when these are not sufficiently vague and transparent they create a certain brilliance and subtlety. In addition, there is an element of rhythm, which seems appropriate for him. His works are bold and vigorous, often set on the floor, and very angry. They look both intimate and out of place.Armando is also a good sculptor, from the Americas. He does not use Cubism; his is a new realism and he shows that it is alive and well. As a person from the Caribbean, he is a local representative of the Second Empire, a Chinese port. He shows that the art of this world is to be as vibrant as any other. He has a more humorous, even sarcastic side than the Cubists. His works are very defiant. These are more painterly than sculptural.Armando lives in Havana and does many sculptural things, including painting. He uses his own rough, unglazed clay, which gives him the freedom he needs to work in a new way, without resort to Cubism. He has been influenced by Cubism and Impressionism and by European sculpture. His art has grown, not by mere repetition, but by a rigorous style and the new forms he finds in himself. He doesnt seem to be afraid of self-doubt.