Leonard Rosenfeld
Jail House Love, 1986, wire, carpet tacks, fabric, exposed stretcher, plank, 63.25 x 49.5 in, 160.655 x 125.73 cm
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Wires  In 1982, Rosenfeld found a piece of electric wire on the floor of his studio. He nailed the wire onto the stretcher bar using carpet tacks. He liked the way it looked and did it until the wire pushed the strips of canvas off the stretcher. At first he used only black and white wire as in the wire piece titled LR (numbers), to Vincent V.G.. After making some black and white wire pieces, he began using colored wire. Sometimes other materials joined the wire, like cotton, silk or fur. And the carpet tacks began to play another role. In 1984, he showed some of the “wire pieces” at Simone Gallery in Soho. A reviewer of this show wrote, in a short article called A Painter Lost to Painting, “How much Leonard Rosenfeld can accomplish and how dazzling it can look by just using tacks and black and white wire is truly remarkable,” adding, “It is what Rosenfeld wants to say in his use of abstract design schemes and primitive forms, this combination of the Neolithic and modern technology that focuses on that long adventure of man that is civilization. Let’s hope the artist is not summing it all up for its ending.” Rosenfeld continued with this, what came to be one of his “signature” series, through the 1980s.

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