Transcending the Question: The Wall Sculpture of Steven Careau
Steven Careau's exquisitely detailed sculptures appear self-contained and iconic, though their spare extremities indicate clearly in which direction you must look and how far. A sensation of sound enters my consciousness, my eyes refocus to discover in the object an implicit animation that opposes the original stillness.
This sense of sound is evoked through the collective visual effect on the wall. Perhaps this is due to each sculpture's precise horizontal, vertical, and diagonal intervals placed in relation to another's, higher or lower, closer or farther from its neighbor, structurally similar yet individual, all floating in the ether the wall has become.
Each is proportioned to fit a human hand at about the scale of a fine tool or instrument. Auditory hallucinations occur when imagining grasping, sliding, plucking, or stretching the object, or perhaps it doesn't need our intervention to enliven? The works ambivalently identify between maker and made, verb and noun. Form and function appear indivisible, and the work transcends the question.
Hermetic logic determines the resolution of each piece down to its most minute detail. Careau credits the influence of his father's work as a patternmaker for his own precision craftmanship, and his growing up on a farm in rural Massachusetts for familiarity with steel tools and weapons, as well as with a process called "bluing" the (gun) metal to finish it.
At the root of Careau's quasi-ritualistic strictness in joining, subdividing, and finishing the metals and fine woods that are his material is a philosophy he phrased as the search for "the Answer;" ONE right answer that is the truth for that piece. I was relieved to learn that "the Answer" was often permitted to be a temporary one; parts could often be disassembled and rearranged.
This is a workmanlike and practical tactic opposed to the rigid idealism inherent in admitting only a single solution. The seeming philosophical dichotomy reflects Malevich's Suprematist doctrines, to which Careau has been devoted for many years, in contrast to those of Malevich's archrival, Tatlin. One can discern the influence of both the former, a theoretical idealist, in Careau's floating crucifix-like forms defining a specific point in an infinite space, as well as the position of his polar opposite, a Constructivist who admits to no meaning other than the fact of the matter confronting him.
The best pieces embody paradox, where associations drawn from outside the object collaborate with the fact of the material itself. A block of dense reddish bloodwood, for example, pierced through with many delicate brass tubes resonated with me as the body of Christ, punctured by thorns and nails. The tubes appear purposeful yet are intuitively located, no mathematical formula, no repetitive sequencing. Having been raised a Catholic, Careau claims there is the ONE hole to make the connection that is "the Answer" for the piece. The sculpture is also made to neatly disassemble.
Jeanette Fintz, April 2023