David R. Guenette

       ARCH ART

Convergence of Things: Objects as Media

Reviewed in Art New England, April/May 2003, by Mary Behrens

Bromfield Gallery/Boston, January 8-February 1, 2003

David Guenette’s sculptural assemblages combine dizzying, near hallucinogenic media. Various lights, recycled wood, tree branches, furniture parts, copper leaf, iron, Plexiglas, and black velvet only begin the long list of intricate parts that comprise this artist’s organically plotted enterprise.

The title of the show is quite literal: Orchestrated objects form Guenette’s linguistic operation. The subject here, memory and personal history, is hardly new terrain for anyone, yet the authenticity of Guenette’s voice and the rigor of the sculptures convey an esthetic that is at once crazed and deliriously real. Guenette builds objects from wood, and his attention to craft is evident in the careful details of each piece.  The plethora of personal memorabilia along with found objects create shrine-like tombs for his ‘60s to early ‘70s adolescence. Reflected in the work are vestiges of a Catholic upbringing in southeastern Massachusetts—rosary beads, small crosses, and light, which, in some pieces, resembles the candle glow in a Catholic church. Memory Bank (2002) is beautiful and one of the larger reliquaries: dozens of personal objects jumbled together amid tool trays, keys, bulbs, and photographs all encased in a vertical, solid wood cabinet. Guenette’s sensibility contains a sort of male-tinkering-in-the-basement feel—withdrawn, insatiably curious, driven.

 An obvious predecessor here is Joseph Cornell, with his boxes, birds, and dollhouse surrealism. Yet Guenette comes from an entirely different age and speaks a different tongue. His nostalgic blend of 70s pop culture, along with a post-Vietnam war realist bent, positions him light years away from Cornell’s dreamy visions. Guenette’s nostalgia, a clear focal point, is saved from sickly sentiment by the integrity of his marks. Each obsessively detailed piece reaches back to hearth and home—the stuff of our pasts—and covers deep and hallowed ground.

Assemblage Thumbnail Index

Assemblage Title Index

Image poems for the concrete world.  Copyright © David R. Guenette    guenette@comcast.net

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