PARIS.- American artist Paul Wallach is showing some twenty recent works for his first big Parisian exhibition under the title “Falling Up”. Born in New York in 1960, Wallach studied History of Art and of Artisanry at Wisconsin and Boston University, then worked with Mark di Suvero as artist in residence in the 1990s, before moving to Paris – where he still lives – in 1994.

His minimalist sculptures are exempted from narrative content. They emerge off the wall at a dynamic point and unfold in space, as if suspended in dialogue with it. After an extended moment of observation, the materials, completely mixed –wood, plaster, fabric, metal or glass- take on a coherence that gives the work unity. These different materials overlap, because of their own specific weight, in order to generate a delicate balance, resulting from the dynamics of gravity. The permanent quest for a centre of gravity is thus one of the factors that constructs form.

The space is open, given substance alternatively by the balance of a hanging shape, the tension between two points revealed by the essence of a volume, the echo of a colour, based on a constant reciprocity. The aim is not to occupy the space but to delineate it.

None of these sculptures can be absorbed at a glance: they change radically according to the spectator’s point of view. The work is an event that alters in composition from moment to moment under the viewer’s eye. It possesses an essential mobility that is inherent to its discovery, a motion of constant unfolding that puts the spectator too in motion, inviting them into a slow exploratory choreography of their own gravity.

Between the wall and these objects emerges an intermediate space that prompts reflection: a reflexion of the shadows and colours that are an integral part of the work and demand the viewer’s attention. Paul Wallach’s sculpture continually reveals a space in its entirety, including – through a mirror effect – the hidden space of the work.

Concentrating space and energy in the intimate quest for a balance of forces, unfolding out into space like spatial dwellings, Paul Wallach’s works are animated by an incessant twofold movement of contraction and expansion which would seem to be the basis of any creation.

Paul Wallach's Falling Up will open on January 23 and runs through March 13, 2010 at Galerie Jaeger Bucher.