Reviews
HELLERbuilds.com
Abstract, intricately complex and just plain beautiful !
Lawrence Heller's geometric wall constructions are fresh and original
yet deeply literate, echo chambers of artistic and architectural precedent reaching
back deeply into the 20th century.
His three dimensional constructions recall Louise Nevelson's sculptures but also the architectons
of Kasimir Malevich and the wall reliefs of his suprematist colleague El Lissitski.
They are wall pieces, but they breakout of the plane of the wall into the space of the viewer in
reversals of perspective...projecting rather then receding in a narrative of spatial depth.
With the kaleidoscopic intricacy of Islamic decorative patterning, the constructions engage the mind
by captivating the eye: the modernist vocabulary of circles, triangles, squares and lines leads above
beyond and through itself in layered spatial tapestries.
The pieces are contemplative despite the physicality of their craft and their cool geometric impulse.
Though trained as an architect, Mr. Heller works like a composer, inventing and reiterating themes,
setting up rhythms that he sustains and then interrupts in silences of empty space.
The compositions are at once incomplete and resolved, the edges rough but the ethos refined....
His micro-environments are artistically considered works of utopian architecture; Each is a different
version and vision of asymmetrical perfection.
JOSEPH GIOVANNINI
New York & Los Angeles based Architectural Critic and Architect
Lawrence Heller's sculptural constructions are difficult to categorize, although one
observer standing before a recent exhibition referred to his wall assemblages as "sculptural synthetic cubism." While certainly influenced by that approach to objects in the real world, they hardly fall neatly into a historical or even contemporary style: They are abstract but evocative of architectural an industrial components, or precision machine-made elements--allusive, but never illustrative so that one cannot pin down the precise source of the allusions. Here and there a screw or nail, pipe or iron beam, computer component or other detritus (salvage, he prefers to call these) of both handmade and industrial operations are apparent. In one piece, for instance within the relatively rigid precise forms of geometric shapes and openings, there emerges an empty molded picture frame quite evidently
handmade by a skilled craftsman.
All these entice the viewer in a game of hide and seek to capture the original inspiration.
Whether constructed of paper, metal, or wood (often made to imitate copper or iron), there
is interplay of space and solid, geometric and not quite geometric, solids and voids,
stableand tilted shapes, symmetrical or off-center elements, each repeated or echoed by
their alternatives, as in the circular holes and disk-like forms composed in larger and
smaller units. These work together to result in a satisfying three-dimensional object that
invites the viewer to become a Lilliputian inhabitant in this make-believe architectonic
environment.
Anita Moskwitz
Professor and Chairperson
Department of Art
Staller Center for the Arts
Stony Brook University