Steel Sculpture Series: 1978 – 2000
Review by David Tannous in Art in America, May-June 1979
“ . . . Janos Enyedi’s group of welded and bolted steel sculpture from the “Bessemer Song” series are richly complex, the sculptures are assembled from a motley collection of fabricated and found parts —primarily rolled sheets, box columns and I-beams —into curving, attenuated configurations. Overlapping, eccentrically cut arcs — gently enfolding partially visible interior spaces — are counterpointed by self-assertive columns and beams, whose straight edges slice out into new territory as ledges, lintels, flying buttresses, diagonal supports. This complexity keeps the viewer active: there is no “frontal position” for these works. And although from certain points the works have a hunch-shouldered, almost defensive heaviness, they are involved much more with questions of balance and position than volume and mass. Some of the rigid, knife-edge parts, perched exquisitely within an assemblage, suggest a giant game of pick-up sticks: one clumsy move, and the whole pile will collapse. Yet the balance is perfect. . . With their curved gestures and leggy articulations, they suggest the elegant, slightly unnatural extension of a ballet dancer, or the delicate strength of a stalky plant.”
Excerpted from Art in America, May-June 1979.
By David Tannous, reviewing an exhibition by Janos Enyedi at Wolfe Street Gallery, Washington, DC