ERIC FERTMAN

Doppelgängers clad in Freudian slips line the walls of the Gallery like a tiny wooden army of the psyche. These are the creatures that populate our waking dreams each conjectured to reflect some aspect of the dreamer. Blocked feet tether surreal bodies to terra firma, wisps of smoke and tufts of hair sprout from misplaced appendages. Like a modern day Geppetto, Eric Fertman skillfully imparts a humanity and emotional range to a simple block of wood.

Slashes of bright metal dance through space with the grace and charm of a teenage boy. “Arms” and “legs” akimbo, it is easy to forget that these simple lines and shapes are just that, hard edge geometries grounded in the rational sciences. Fertman has deployed these ciphers frequently over the past decade, always carved from wood. In his new body of work, their rawness is translated perversely to steel and fine metals.

Eric Fertman continues to produce witty and edgy sculpture with big attitude. His wry approach is a means of tackling topical issues through disjuncture. In doing so Fertman suggests the remove we often experience as bystanders to global cataclysms. Modern reality is constructed largely through images and in-turn our confrontation with social and biological strife is constantly mediated.

Size matters. A single soaring monolith dominates the room, a massive concrete and stainless steel structure rises 12 feet from the gallery floor. Abstract with a hint of human. The same shapes can be found repeated in modest blocks of hand carved wood, several not more than a few inches tall, which litter its base. Where we are awed or cowed by the giant we are charmed by its modest companions. The exhibition is an object lesson in why size matters. It would seem Eric Fertman knows just what to do with it.

A hyper-energized mash-up, “THISORGANIZED” presents work which spans genre and me- dium from almost two dozen young, working artists in dialogue. It is a microcosm of a bur- geoning artistic community that is united by individuality of vision—from Chie Fueki’s vivid multi-cultural response to American popular culture, to Benjamin Degen’s heady, psychedelic throwback to Cubism, to the obsessively rendered pen-and-ink drawings of Blaze Lamper to Yuri Masnyj’s singular approach to Still Life in two and three dimensions.

We look onto a darkened stage with sets built of battered planks, hot pink, sheltering a ragtag collection of apparitions and shades. Shadows to solids, this mysterious band of umbraes would be impossible to identify were it not for the characteristic tilt of the head, the isolated gesture, the defining bulge. We look for the familiar clues, seeking to fill the void and projecting bits of ourselves onto their blank screen. These props or sculptures become receptacles for our most private thoughts and memories, dream-catchers for the insomniac.

Monuments to both past and future, Eric Fertman’s wooden constructs take root in the imagination suggesting new possibilities forged from ancient and modern histories. Drawing upon the Russian Suprematists and Philip Guston, film noir and the Sunday comics, the work gallops through time on Olive Oyl’s oversized shoes. Seamlessly mixing high and low culture, the artist assigns equal value to Malevich as to Raymond Chandler. Working in wood and metal, Fertman inflects these inert materials with humor and humanity, charming both object and viewer in the process.