From the Archive: “Hadzi’s Wood-Fired Stoneware at Kouros Gallery”
Dimitri Hadzi “Vulcan,” 2002, wood-fired stoneware, 66 x 20 x 11 in (167.6 x 50.8 x 27.9 cm)
Originally published in The New York Times
December 27, 2002
by GRACE GLUECK
Kouros Gallery
23 East 73rd Street
Through Jan. 11
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Steeped in the myths and legends of Mediterranean culture while holding on to modernist tradition, Dimitri Hadzi, now 81, is known for his technically accomplished work in bronze and stone. Recently, drawing on his experience of working wax for casting into metal, he has turned to modeling in clay, specifically the medium of wood-fired stoneware.
The emphasis in this show is on the stoneware, publicly shown for the first time, but a number of recent bronzes are also present. The stoneware is more hermetic, more about inwardness, than the relatively open bronzes, which freely interact with the space around them.
Compare, for instance, ''Apollian Libation,'' a black bronze topped by a vessel-like shape that reads as a massive head turned in profile (these pieces hint at figuration) and whose trunk sprouts arm-and-leg-like extensions, with ''Circe,'' a closed unlimbed columnar stoneware piece in three stacked sections that suggests a base and two vessels, one atop the other.
The top section of ''Circe,'' as formidable a presence as the bronze, widens to suggest more an opening within, the cup/head of a mysterious enchantress who closely guards her magic potion. In some smaller works, like the cylindrical ''Pylae II,'' made by rolling a flat into a tube, a slit where the two edges would normally meet runs down the front, giving a glimpse of the inner surface. (The piece, incidentally, somewhat resembles a leg brace.)
If these resolutely ungraceful, clunky works have more hints of the Abstract Expressionist era than the sleeker, less heroic attitudes of current sculpture, why not? They stand fast in their old-fashioned eloquence.
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A version of this article appears in print on Dec. 27, 2002, Section E, Page 46 of the National edition with the headline: ART IN REVIEW; Dimitri Hadzi -- Wood-Fired Stoneware Sculptures With Recent Bronze
