Staring into the welded steel forms of Melvin Edwards' sculptures, you can imagine the callused hands, bruised and tired backs and weathered faces of the black working-class Americans who helped build this country. Or perhaps, from another angle, you see a ceremonial African mask, rendered in futuristic angled steel.
Such is the character of "Conversation with Igun," the current exhibition of sculpture from Melvin Edwards at the Bayly Art Museum. The pieces can be described as abstract, but never cold, and always evocative. Edwards says, "This is not simple statement stuff."
When asked what contemporary themes influence his pieces, the 63-year-old artist responds, "I've lived through it all, so it's all contemporary to me." From his experiences, Edwards has constructed sculptures of materials with connotations both universally recognizable and more personal to the artist. He encourages the viewer to "think at least double about everything in those pieces."
Edwards was born in Houston, Texas, in 1937 and began sculpting in the '60s during the Civil Rights Movement. During this period, he established himself as a sculptor who was not afraid to tackle charged racial issues in his work. He came to prominence as a black sculptor when doing so was still largely unprecedented.
"Conversation with Igun" is largely composed of works from the '90s. His pieces benefit from a thoughtfully curated exhibit, which allows for a journey-like experience through his works. The piece "Archaeology"(1995-99) stands at the entrance and acts as a harbinger for the tone of the works.
In what could be the debris of a burned-out warehouse or a rock of dirty mid-January curb snow, chains, railroad spikes, padlocks, tools and a conch shell hang suspended. The collage of steel seems to be a reminder of the journey of many blacks in this country, from across the ocean and into the chains of slavery and finally into the workforce that built the nation.
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The bulk of the exhibit comes from an ongoing series called "Lynch Fragments" which Edwards started while in experiencing the extremely strained race relations of Los Angeles in the early nineties. He is also continually influenced in this vein of work by his travels to Africa. The pieces have the quality of faces, as they hang at a height of six feet and seem to stare the viewer in the face, challenging him to stare back.
In some ways the sculptures of "Fragments" can take on the character of brutal industrial collages made up of chains, spikes, hammers, shovels and steel sheets. They can suggest the brutality of work or the progress it embodies. Pieces like "To Dig Again," "A symbol of ?" and "To Tell the Truth" stand out amongst them.
At the same time as the hard industrial quality of the shapes suggests inhumanity, the face-like arrangements of these seemingly non-human parts as well as the evocative African names of some of the pieces beg the viewer to make other connections. The sleeker steel of "Conversation with Igun" and "Enigma" easily come off as futuristic ceremonial masks.
Sculptures with names like "Deni-Malick" (farmland in Senegal) and "Atokpe" (an Ido greeting meaning "long-life") refer specifically to Edwards' travels on the African continent. These pieces, with their conflicting intonations of industrial American and traditional African culture, ask the viewer to make connections that are not readily visible in the abstract pieces.
"Conversation with Igun" will be on display at the Bayly Art Museum until May 13. Viewers of the exhibit should be prepared to encounter a world of history peering into these conflagrations of steel.
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