Michael DeLucia by Wayne Adams

Michael DeLucia’s current solo show, spanning both of Eleven Rivington Gallery’s spaces, is about as timely as one can get. DeLucia deftly hits on several recent trends in the New York art world simultaneously with process-based, abstract, sculptural works that are provisional yet strikingly beautiful.

Being process-based, DeLucia’s wall-mounted pieces don’t immediately reveal how they were made. It’s obvious that the artist has carved into the surface of the 4 x 8’ O.S.B board panels, but how this happens with such precision is only revealed in the press release. Using a CNC router to cut elaborate 3-D images on rough wood, DeLucia is able to remove the direct evidence of his own hand from the image and yet maintain a resonance of natural or unexpected feel through the reaction of the wood grain to the machine’s blades.

There remains a proliferation of abstract artwork on the New York scene and DeLucia’s large-scale geometric compositions fit right in. Some of the wall works are completely non-objective, but most contain a single, recognizable 3-D shape (a cube, a sphere) which fills the visual plane. DeLucia’s didactic titles also do little to guide the viewer’s thinking in any particular direction—as seen in the exhibition’s signature piece, “Cube (Projection 2),” 2012. To that extent,1980’s computer graphics come to mind, as well as Sol Lewitt’s decidedly hand-made drawings, construction barriers, minimal painting and sculpture, and Home Depot. 

The sculptural quality of the work cannot be overlooked in this show. Not only because there are two somewhat traditional sculptures displayed, but the material and physical presence of the wall work is so imposing that while the graphic images are very rich, they cannot be read entirely as twodimensional pieces yet calling them sculptures seems over-simplifying.

There is definitely a provisional feeling to the work over all. Constructed of O.S.B. board or plywood, the work has a freshness that is surely to age significantly over time as the rough-cut wood is exposed to the air—not that plywood can’t age gracefully. The wood panels are unfinished, though sometimes painted in solid or two-tone colors or covered with posters before the router’s cutting begins. as seen on construction barriers throughout the city—surfaces that are temporary by their very nature. 

Finally, the work filling both galleries is unabashedly beautiful. It is an elevation of everyday materials and the re-contextualizing of graphical forms through the lens of industrial production processes. DeLucia has turned the materials of construction onto themselves and we are all the better for it.

Cube (Projection 2), 2012, household paint on plywood, 96 x 96in