Arthur Simms: Sculpture and Drawings
D. Dominick Lombard
The art of Arthur Simms is versatile, rough, edgy, bold, haunting, rather primitive in technique–which gives the work its charm–highly reflective, and at times, intimidating. Through his art, he wishes us to feel what he feels–experience his life, his history, and compare it to our own. He challenges the viewer’s instincts with the foreign and the familiar. And being Jamaican born, Simms brings a particular history home.
An admitted hoarder, Simms learned to fashion fantasy objects at a very early age using the debris of sand and sea. Recent works such as CINQUE CENTO (2003) and BIG WHEEL (2004) are intimate assemblages that incorporate toy cars which relates directly to his childhood when fantasy outweighed reality. In fact, all his works have that same sense of wonderment and desire. In addition, they are politically, sexually and socially charged. I was particularly impressed with his wall works–which are far from two-dimensional since they offer many layers of materials, and a multitude of veiled of meanings. EGG (2000) is comprised of a half dozen layers of paper and fabric secured with colored thread and buttons. The buttons form an egg, a shape which surrounds a ball point pen rendering of a geometric chick. In some ways, this work is unique because it is so straight forward and to the point.
RUN AND HIDE (1999) has a far different feel. Here, the artist scribes a large geometric pattern with the words "Run and hide" over a lacy, yellowed and stained linen cloth. The contrast between the delicate cloth and the obsessively drawn, drawn and redrawn graphite lines is stunning. That same graphic boldness can be found in LORD BRYNNER AND THE WAILERS (1999), a tribal, Inuit looking form drawn in blue ballpoint on glassine paper that commands our attention and keeps us transfixed.
My favorite two works of the wall pieces are LANDSCAPE, PRINCE BUSTER (1998) and BERNINI (2006). Here we see the full effect of Simms uncanny ability to compose his thoughts brilliantly and simply. LANDSCAPE, PRINCE BUSTER looks like an abstracted amusement park with its drawn marker and pen lines over copper and foil. I couldn’t take my eyes off of it. BERNINI must have something to do with Simms’ stay in Italy for his Rome Prize back in 2002-2003. This piece sports a pair of Bernini exhibition posters next to a minimal grid of black paper, colored thread, a button, foil and some fur effectively creating an air of celebration and liberation.
Dominating the gallery’s ample space is a number of freestanding sculptures. The obsessive tying up of everything he constructs with hemp rope or wire is puzzling at first. One may think of bondage or oppression tempered with a bit of whit and maybe a certain amount of distance. But there is something else here. Perhaps a reference to the net fishing back home in Jamaica, a sight that surely filled his youth. But no, that’s not it. That’s too easy. It must be the textural element–the tying up or down of everything to the point of near absurdity that suggests anxiousness spawned by repressed memories. Spotty fragments–pieces of the past that are reassembled to capture for posterity, a different world that is surely lost forever.
But most of all, there is a tension–a push pull that is both literal and figurative–visceral and everlasting.
