Rochester sculptor Albert Paley has earned an international reputation for his ability to manipulate cold, hard metal into organic, seemingly impossible forms. Over a career spanning more than three decades, he has completed more than 60 monumental commissions for sites from Washington DC to Houston to Los Angeles. This exhibition organized by the Memorial Art Gallery brought together 37 sculptures and models and 16 drawings from 2000 to 2010, as well as a video of the artist at work.
About the Artist
“Albert Paley is a Romantic,” writes exhibition curator Marie Via, “and by this I mean that nature and our relationship with it dominates his aesthetic. He is endlessly fascinated by plant life, sometimes interpreting its structures quite literally, and then again abstracting it to a suggestion of itself. At the intellectual core of his work is the belief that natural forms have the power to humanize the minimalist architecture of factories, apartment complexes and arts centers…. He understands that people who try to work, live, shop and relax behind brutal facades can find some sort of balance by walking through or passing by artworks that celebrate our connection with nature.”
A graduate of Tyler School of Art in Philadelphia, where he received his BFA and MFA, Paley began his career as a goldsmith, the maker of jewelry that might be described as futuristically Art Nouveau. A decade later, working in forged and fabricated steel, he came to national prominence with an exquisite set of portal gates for the Renwick Gallery, part of the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, DC.
As the scale of his work grew, so did his reputation as an artist. He has earned the description of “iconoclastic traditionalist” for his ability to successfully integrate naturalism and abstraction in a personal and highly recognizable aesthetic. “Albert Paley’s work is assertively virile; huge bars of steel, twisted, hammered and welded as though in a giant’s smithy,” writes art historian James Trilling. “That it is also personal and graceful is the measure of his brilliance.”
Today, Paley’s work can be found in the permanent collections of such museums as the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York; the Museum of Fine Arts Boston; the Museum of Fine Arts Houston; the Victoria and Albert Museum in London; and the Memorial Art Gallery.
Albert Paley in the 21st Century was accompanied by a full-color, 172-page catalog, available at the Gallery Store in softcover and hardcover.
This exhibition was made possible by Presenting Sponsors Bank of America and The Mr. and Mrs. Raymond J. Horowitz Foundation for the Arts, Inc. Additional underwriting is provided by the Gallery Council of the Memorial Art Gallery, the Gouvernet Arts Fund of Rochester Area Community Foundation, the Thomas and Marion Hawks Memorial Fund, Nancy G. Curme and Nancy Turner. Support is also provided by Deanne Molinari, Bob and Joanne Gianniny, the Elizabeth F. Cheney Foundation and Mann’s Jewelers.
The exhibition catalog was underwritten by Nancy and Alan Cameros with additional support from the Gouvernet Arts Fund of Rochester Area Community Foundation, and the Mr. and Mrs. Raymond J. Horowitz Foundation for the Arts, Inc. and the John and Jayne Summers Foundation.