Continuing through July 9, 2011
The aroma of cedar fills the small rectangular room; it’s a pleasurable scent that surprises the visitor as they climb the stairs to the exhibition featuring Isaac Resnikoff. We come to a series of five black and white photographs, each depicting a partially completed house the artist built in an empty lot behind his studio. The wooden structures look more like adult erector sets since the construction only involves basic two-by-fours that make up the skeletal structure of a building. After a structure was built to the artist’s satisfaction, he photographed it and then disassembled it, only to begin the next one. Each configuration has its own personality, although all are quite modest. It’s the wood sculpture placed in the center of the gallery that provides the smell, and it’s the piece that ties the entire show together. An organic and rounded exterior, it has the proportions of a giant pinecone with the bumpy surface of a boulder. There are a few holes that one can look through. Inside one can see the evidence of the geometrically cut pieces of wood that support it. Placed directly on the organic texture of the sculpture is a rectangle that looks like a plaque. Nothing is inscribed but its presence relates to the housing structures that have been built, photographed, and broken down. At once sculpture and landmark, the housing structures reference a fading past, the feeling of a moment just missed but still present thanks to that smell of cedar (Steve Turner Contemporary, Miracle Mile).
