Albright College Center for the Arts Freedman Gallery is at 13th and Bern streets. For hours and details, call 610-921-7616 or visit www.albright.edu/freedman.
Milwaukee artist Will Pergl is showing his multifaceted sculptures through Oct. 9 at the Freedman Gallery of Albright College Center for the Arts. The exhibit is titled "Why Is Nowhere Like That" and consists of 11 medium-scale sculptures that either stand free or hang on the wall. The artworks elicit an architectural appearance that manipulates our sense of perspective and encourages us to see these sculptures through an internal and conceptual filter.
Pergl received a master of fine arts degree in sculpture from Cornell University and a bachelor of fine arts in painting and sculpture from Southern Illinois University at Carbondale, Ill. He is an associate professor of art at Milwaukee Institute of Art and Design as well as a nationally exhibiting artist.
His chosen materials are milled wood, plastic and metal assembled in beamlike, skeletal structures that may recall a giant erector set. But beyond the appearance and materials aspect, the work refers to connections and communication mind-sets amid today's technological society.
The pivotal piece of the display is called "The Tallest Freestanding Tower in the World of August 1962." This girded abstraction is a wooden structure that references and abstracts a 1,000-foot communication tower near the artist's home. From a drastic perspective of looking straight up, Pergl had taken numerous photographs of the tower at different positions and pieced them together to produce referential structures for this and other works. The sculpture is a response to this vision and placed on a high shelf to offer visitors a similar vantage point.
Other pieces such as "Glitch" or "Chair in Seven Point Perspective" pursue the idea further as the sculptures seem to change dimension when viewed from different angles. Another piece, reflecting the exhibit's title "Why Is Nowhere Like That," is laser cut in reverse on a steel framework, painted red and leaning against a wall.
"The Most Boring Day of the 20th Century" is a large wooden plaque with the date April 11, 1954, engraved with a flourish into the surface and painted a lime green. The title is derived from a Google search on the least amount of activity recorded during the last century, which is nil for this date, technically making it the most unimportant date in history.
By giving it even a nonvalue, he has now honored it with a modicum of importance, a purpose if only for the knowledge of such, and an illustration that anything big, little or nonexistent can be known through the process of digital relays and instantaneous Internet connectedness.
Of course, these works can be challenging without the back story, which is available in a small booklet at the reception desk. Nonetheless, his woodworking and metalsmithing crafts are beyond reproach and very attractive as formal objects reacting to the space they occupy - or the space they do not occupy.
Contact Ron Schira: life@readingeagle.com.