Peter Shelton
LA Louver Gallery, Venice, California
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Peter Shelton's current exhibition, "sixtyslippers", is a breathtaking achievement. The artist's previous work has demonstrated that he handles substantial mass with enormous grace, and the present work builds on that reputation. A single installation, it comprises sixty low-profile, cast iron "cones", rust-colored, varying in diameter from 14 inches to about 3 feet, and in weight from 150 to 500 pounds, each suspended by a vertical cable from the gallery ceiling to a distance of a scant one quarter inch from the floor. Clustered in randomly associated groups, each individualized by its distinctive shape and size, this forest of massive objects floats serenely at the viewer's feet with a movement so subtle as to be barely perceptible, and with all the delicacy of inverted lily pads on the surface of a pond.

The result would be a delight if taken only at the level of aesthetic form. It's a work of stunning beauty, its elegance deriving from the simple contrast of vertical and horizontal elements, weight and weightlessness, the purity of color, and so on. But more than that, this is one of those rare works that elicits absolute and immediate assent: we walk in on it and say, Yes, as though it were an experience we had somehow been anticipating but had never imagined. It's about more than form. Like all truly good art, it opens itself to each viewer's response, but for this one viewer the work is about presence, about the gravity - and the pun is intended here - of each moment; it is about how we experience our bodies in relation to the space around us and the earth that supports us, and how there's some-thing in us that forever yearns to be freed from the matter that restrains us. Meanwhile, the cymbal-like forms seem to invite us to tune in to the music of the planet, and listen attentively to its resonant silences. It's a work that echoes deep within the psyche.