“Beauty without grace is the hook without the bait.”
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
When we are confronted with Guy Dill’s dynamic, balanced forms, there is a curious duality that slips back and forth; the sweeping, gestural motions of a ‘figure’ and the heavier, structural proportionality of skillfully welded bronze. These two elements, grace and beauty,
oscillate to give not only a sense of movement but of stability.
Based in Venice, California, Guy Dill’s early work was part of the 70s and 80s California post-minimalism movement, which featured artists such as Ellsworth Kelly, Richard Serra and Richard Tuttle. While some of Dill’s imagery can be traced back to this early stage in his career (for example the ‘knot’ is based on Dill’s early work with rope sculpture and his experiences as a sailor), his mature work is far more classically modernist, using traditional materials with “both feet firmly on the ground”; far less ponderous and more human and accessible. Dill’s development of the medium of bronze, which opts for a more high-tech approach to fabrication in place of the traditional pouring method, gives the works a crisper, sharper and more contemporary feel, while maintaining the essential vocabulary of modernism: the line, the curve, and other basic geometric shapes that have been fundamental to art since Cezanne. One gets a sense that these sculptures truly cross the boundaries be tween many media, the warm and seductive patinas are worthy of painterly status, and the sweeping forms have all the energy of a drawing. It has been with a quiet, steady energy that Guy Dill has slowly risen to become a master of sculptural form, and the works presented here exemplify an artist at the height of his powers.
“Beauty without grace is the hook without the bait.”
experiences as a sailor), his mature work is far more classically modernist, using traditional materials with “both feet firmly on the ground”; far less ponderous and more human and accessible. Dill’s development of the medium of bronze, which opts for a more high-tech approach to fabrication in place of the traditional pouring method, gives the works a crisper, sharper and more contemporary feel, while maintaining the essential vocabulary of modernism: the line, the curve, and other basic geometric shapes that have been fundamental to art since Cezanne. One gets a sense that these sculptures truly cross the boundaries be tween many media, the warm and seductive patinas are worthy of painterly status, and the sweeping forms have all the energy of a drawing. It has been with a quiet, steady energy that Guy Dill has slowly risen to become a master of sculptural form, and the works presented here exemplify an artist at the height of his powers.