The origin of Richard Stankiewicz's marvelous junkyard sculpture was, as the artist liked to tell it, the preparation for a garden. Digging in a city yard in 1951, Stankiewicz discovered several rusted metal objects, which, when placed together, took on a nearly spiritual presence. The moment may have drawn the artist back to boyhood romps in a Detroit foundry dump, but it also served as a link to his then recent studies with Ossip Zadkine and, in particular, Fernand Léger. Much of Stankiewicz's work—long supported by gallerist Virginia Zabriskie—would combine machine-inspired fantasy (Léger) with figurative cubism (Zadkine). His first sculptures, the core of this show, were like fragile scaffolding for later, heavier work: Long pieces of wire, held together by metal threads or twine and sometimes coated with plaster, suggest birds, insects, or the human form. In their rusted spindles and joints, you sense, too, the possibility of some mechanical action, if only... More >>>