'Jim Dine: Sculpture' looks at pop artist's career

[February 02, 2011]  DETROIT (AP) -- For pop artist Jim Dine, his new exhibition in Grand Rapids offers the broadest look in one showing at the sculptures he's created over the past five decades.

"Jim Dine: Sculpture" opened Friday at Frederik Meijer Gardens & Sculpture Park. The 75-year-old Cincinnati native's works fill all three of Meijer Gardens' gallery spaces and spill outside, including a 12-foot painted bronze heart on display in the Keeler Sculpture Terrace.

"It's over 50 years of images in the sculpture and what you're seeing is me manipulating three-dimensional work," Dine told The Associated Press in a recent telephone interview. "A lot of it's painted, because I am a painter. And I enjoy painting on bronze, and a lot of the work is bronze."

Better known for his paintings and graphic art, Dine said his sculpture is more of a collaborative effort. Metal pieces, he noted, are made with help from foundry artisans.

"To make sculpture, unless you're making something the size of your hand, you need other people," Dine said.

Visitors will see "Nancy and I at Ithaca," a 1960s sculpture of a heart made of straw, as well as "Large Parrot Screams Color," a large, colorfully painted bronze parrot from 2007 perched on a heart. "Wheat Fields," a 1989 painted bronze piece featuring a massive skull and smaller sculptures atop an axle mounted on tractor tires, dominates one room.

The exhibition, which runs through May 8, looks at Dine's sculpture from the late 1950s to recent years. Like his other work, the sculptures explore themes related to tool imagery, the Venus figure, hearts and Pinocchio.

"I've been carving Pinocchio sculpture since '92, and making paintings and drawings and prints and photos of this boy," Dine said. "Here, these are rather life-size and they are all wood. All of the ones that are here are wood that I carved and painted."

A half-dozen Pinocchio sculptures are among the more than 20 works on display for the exhibition, which is organized in conjunction with The Pace Gallery in New York City and Richard Gray Gallery in Chicago. On Feb. 11, The Pace Gallery opens "Jim Dine, Paintings," an exhibition of 10 large-scale paintings that runs through March 12.

"Dine has a vast creativity and willingness to turn to a variety of images, many derived from found objects and popular or consumer culture," Joseph Becherer, chief curator at Meijer Gardens, said in statement. "His sensitivity for textures and surfaces coupled with his mastery of materials allows him to create works in a range of materials."

During the Michigan exhibition, Dine plans to speak April 14 at Meijer Gardens as part of the 2011 Midwest Art History Society Conference.

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Online:

http://www.meijergardens.org/

http://thepacegallery.com/

http://www.richardgraygallery.com/

[Associated Press; By DAVID RUNK]

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