ANDES — Visitors entering Corner Gallery in Andes are immediately met by sculptures that seem to defy easy definition. Some resemble folded ribbons frozen in motion, while others suggest geological formations or organic landscapes. Although rooted in the artist's background as a painter, Matthias van Arkel's exhibition Tangled / Untangled is unmistakably a sculptural experience.
On view through Sept. 30, the exhibition presents a collection of bronze and silicone works that investigate how color, texture and form can exist beyond the traditional canvas. Many of the bronze sculptures were created during Van Arkel's residency at ceramic artist Jeff Shapiro's foundry in nearby Andes, where experimentation became central to the project.
Van Arkel begins each work by creating layered sheets of colored silicone. Rather than applying paint with a brush, he repeatedly passes silicone through a roller mill, building dense, colorful slabs that become the raw material for his sculptures.
"This is actually the original for all the works that I do," he explained while holding one of the rolled silicone forms. "It's like a small painting in itself."
Those colorful elements are folded, compressed and assembled into sculptural compositions. Some remain as vividly colored silicone, while others are cast in bronze, preserving every ridge, fold and fingerprint while replacing color with the quiet weight of metal.
"I wanted to see what happens if you take away the colors," Van Arkel said. "What's left? I thought the result was very interesting."
Rather than polishing the bronze to perfection, he intentionally leaves traces of the casting process visible. Fingerprints, mold seams and subtle imperfections remain embedded in the surface, emphasizing the object's history rather than concealing it.
The exhibition includes monumental works that command the gallery floor as well as smaller studies that reveal the evolution of his ideas. One imposing sculpture recalls the mass and presence of a sarcophagus, not as a literal object but as an exploration of physical weight.
"It's more the feeling of this heaviness that I'm after," Van Arkel said.
Throughout the exhibition, recognizable influences occasionally emerge. Viewers may sense echoes of Alberto Giacometti's expressive surfaces, Henry Moore's organic forms or Edgar Degas' richly patinated bronzes. Yet Van Arkel's sculptures ultimately establish their own visual language through movement and material.
His residency with Jeff Shapiro proved instrumental in realizing several of the exhibition's most technically demanding pieces. One bronze sculpture required nine separate hollow sections to be cast and seamlessly welded together, a process Van Arkel credits Shapiro with executing flawlessly.
Beyond Tangled / Untangled, Corner Gallery is also presenting a companion exhibition of serigraphs from Sweden's Galleri Astley, introducing visitors to the gallery's long tradition of collaborative printmaking and strengthening the cultural exchange between Sweden and the Catskills.
What makes Van Arkel's exhibition memorable is its invitation to look slowly. The sculptures reward movement around them as light reveals shifting contours, layered surfaces and unexpected relationships between color, texture and mass. Rather than asking viewers to choose between painting and sculpture, Tangled / Untangled demonstrates how the two disciplines can merge into a singular artistic language, one that is tactile, expressive and deeply rooted in the physical act of making.
