Roger Phillips:
New Sculpture and Prints
James Graham & Sons Gallery is pleased to announce an exhibition of sculpture and prints by Roger Phillips, which marks the artist’s third solo exhibition with the gallery.
The show will feature three new large-scale outdoor kinetic sculptures in addition to prints which Phillips is exhibiting for the first time. Small scale sculpture maquettes will also be featured.
Roger Phillips’ sculptures are made of painted aluminum and stainless steel. In his kinetic work, there is a dynamic contrast between the rigid frame and the fluidity of the moving elements. The moving parts – single plane squares, circles, rectangles or triangles – are attached top and bottom and revolve 360 degrees in the wind on stainless steel bearings. As the parts revolve, their painted surfaces often reflect their surroundings. These works recall Plato’s description of the beauty of geometric form: “…these are not, like other things, beautiful relatively, but always and absolutely.”
The prints are an austere but cheerful representation of order. The juxtaposition of the elements to each other and the placement on the sheet, as well as the ‘value’ created by the color, are critical. The simplicity results in the number of elements being hugely significant. Lance Storm in The Enigma of Numbers says, “Since the time of the ancient Greeks, and undoubtedly long before, humans have found meaning and import in numbers. Pythagoras thought numbers were the very elements of reality. Kepler believed they determined the planetary courses of the solar system. Carl Jung saw in numbers the instrument par excellence for the mind to understand order itself.” Each number has a universal associational value. For example: One is singular, original, alone; Two is a pair, can be harmonious or dissonant; Three is triangular, competing, immutable, etc.
Roger Phillips was born in New York City in 1930 and graduated from Bard College in 1953. His outdoor sculptures are in numerous public and private collections including: George Washington Carver Houses, 100th Street and Madison Avenue, New York, NY; Wharton, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA; Schiffer Publishing Corp, Atglen, PA; and Sarah Lawrence College, Bronxville, NY. Phillips’ works have been shown in exhibitions such as the Atlanta Botanical Garden, Sculpture in Motion, the Monte Carlo Biennale, Monaco, contemporary sculpture at Chesterwood, Stockbridge, MA and this summer at the Jenkins Arboretum near Philadelphia.