Valentin Tatransky

Here’s what I like about William Noland’s current work: I like the way he lays bare the creative process. You’ve never been here in western New York when the Town of Amherst lays down a sidewalk. I like that moment when the concrete is still wet. They have to put wood against the concrete to keep the concrete in place, and to reinforce those boards they use steel. William Noland’s work has this same wonderful informal quality to it, as if the artist was in the middle of making something and then couldn’t quite make up his mind.

It’s not just the ambiguities in his art that I admire. I admire his drawing and his sense of proportion. Notice how unashamed he is of the rectangle. Look at that wooden box he put right in the middle of that rectilinear frame. Notice the angle. Notice how the steel reinforces the wood.

As a sculptor, Noland is not an apologist; he is the genuine article. He does understand three-dimensional unity. I’m not saying that I liked everything I saw in his studio. Sometimes the frames of his sculptures are too heavy. What one cherishes in his art is the lightness of his touch—nonetheless, when he gets bottom heavy, the result is magic.

©2008

Kate Dobbs Ariail

Noland’s abstract sculpture is rigorous, to say the least, even daunting in its exquisite formalism. Working with the materials of architecture, he devises arrangements that—like buildings—demand to be looked at from numerous vantage points. Yet at the same time, they deal with the formal concerns of abstract painting and representational photography. Abstract and cerebral though they are, Noland’s sculptures reveal a passionate devotion to the mysteries of relationships: up to down, back to forward, textured to smooth, rhythm to stillness, mark to absence of mark.

Noland’s passion is conveyed through the concentrated attention required to place his materials in precise alignments that maximize their expressivity. It’s an aesthetic passion, one that values purity and refinement over quick expression or emotional release. Noland draws our attention away from himself and his artistic process, keeping us focused on the work itself in a way that’s not particularly fashionable.

The paradox is that, for all his reticence, Noland is more truly revealing than the self-centered “tell-all” artists who have no topic but themselves. Take “Southern States”. Five years in the making, this is clearly the product of an artist who’s willing to work and rework to find the most harmonious interplay between his elements. Noland abstracts from architecture in order to deal with ideas about home, about self-image, about one’s place in the world.

© 1995

Linda Johnson Dougherty

William Noland creates sculptures that are like abstract, architectural installations or three-dimensional drawings in space. He does not make discrete objects, but rather compositions of disparate forms and materials that take shape in very open, linear, schematic works. Noland plays off the industrial quality of rough wood as an art material and also incorporates found objects, such as metal rails, used two-by-fours and miscellaneous pieces of scavenged metal and wood. His installations juxtapose and reveal the different surfaces and qualities found in similar materials: rusted metal, shiny stainless steel, painted bronze. The surfaces of Noland’s sculptures are used and marked, in this case with nail holes, staples, gouges and pencil marks. Two of the works have large, rectangular plates of black Plexiglas placed on the floor, creating the illusion that one is looking into a bottomless hole or pool of black ink or water.

Noland stacks and layers linear forms into vertical and horizontal works that have strong architectural associations—installations that reveal the bones or underpinnings of a structure by removing its sheltering skin or façade. One tries to imagine the functions of these sculptures—machines, benches, shelters—but the forms have been abstracted, shifted and twisted away from what might have been their original purpose. The works all provide openings and vistas that transform both the space in which they’re installed and the works themselves as one walks around them. Although Noland has only four pieces installed in the gallery, dating from 1990 to 1995, they fill the space with great presence.

The show has a very Zen-like quality because of its spare, almost austere installation, which effectively enhances the explorations in abstraction. This is a thought-provoking and challenging exhibition that’s worth seeing more than once.

©1995