Art Talk
Vincent Fecteau at Matthew Marks
Hunter Drohojowska-Philp likes the soft power of the Bay Area artist.
By Hunter Drohojowska-Philp • • 4m ListenVincent Fecteau is a master of disguise. His sculptures, about the size of a carry-on suitcase, are poised on clean white pedestals in the perfectly proportioned Matthew Marks Gallery in Hollywood. At first glance, or worse, in a jpeg online, they appear to be cast of some sort of dulled metal. That is Fecteau’s slight of hand.
Vincent Fecteau. Untitled. 2016. Papier-mâché, acrylic paint, cardboard tube. 22 1/4 x 50 1/4 x 19 inches. 57 x 128 x 48 cm. ©Vincent Fecteau, Courtesy Matthew Marks Gallery
Vincent Fecteau. Untitled. 2016. Papier-mâché, acrylic paint, ribbon, cardboard. 20 x 45 1/2 x 21 inches. 51 x 116 x 53 cm. ©Vincent Fecteau, Courtesy Matthew Marks Gallery
Fecteau’s sculptures are both rectinlinear and not. As David Pagel observed in the L.A. Times, they refer to the severe boxes made by Donald Judd and the generous curvature of Henry Moore depending upon where you might be standing to look at them. Carefully placed to relate to one another, each sculpture also connects to a small collage relief on the wall.
Detail of Vincent Fecteau. Untitled. 2016. Papier-mâché, acrylic paint, ribbon, cardboard. 20 x 45 1/2 x 21 inches. 51 x 116 x 53 cm. Photo by Hunter Drohojowska-Philp.
These, too, are rather odd, combining photographs of architecture or decorative arts details with three-dimensional materials like a piece of ribbon or white cord or scrap of wood. (In fact, I was initially intrigued by the fact that the announcement of his show arrived as folded book of postcards, in itself something that hasn’t arrived in the mailbox in a decade or so.)
Vincent Fecteau. Untitled. 2014. Mixed media collage. 4 1/4 x 14 1/4 x 1/2 inches. 11 x 36 x 1 cm. ©Vincent Fecteau, Courtesy Matthew Marks Gallery
Vincent Fecteau. Untitled. 2014. Mixed media collage. 7 1/2 x 5 1/4 x 1/2 inches. 19 x 13 x 1 cm. ©Vincent Fecteau, Courtesy Matthew Marks Gallery
Ocula online interview, he makes what is today such a rare declaration that I quote it in its entirety: “I would like to encourage people to just look and trust their intuition. People are much more visually astute than they often give themselves credit for. It's a failure of our art institutions that people don't feel like that have some inherent ability to appreciate art.”
