Getting hammered at Cartwright Hall

I was at Cartwright Hall in Bradford today, for a meeting about being a tour guide for the giant Hockney work, Bigger Trees Near Warter, which is soon to be installed in pride of place on the ground floor. But it’s not there yet, and while the gallery staff are busy preparing for the paintings arrival (it’s a bit of a diva apparently and demands its own micro climate!) the main exhibition space downstairs is screened off. But, if you go inside and turn right you’ll find an exhibition that is very different, and I think incredibly beautiful.

Marcus Levine’s ‘Hammered’ is a collection of his nail sculptures. This sounds a bit industrial and dull, but in fact they are lovely. The majority of the pieces are pictures, but instead of using a more traditional medium Levine creates his art by hammering nails into a plain white background, creating images of the human body, a rose, ballet shoes and a cat! Others are more abstract, and I was fascinated with how a pattern made using something as proverbially hard as nails could look so ethereal, as though it could be blown away as easily as a dandelion clock. These sculptures beg you to run your fingers across them, which is welcomed by the gallery and the artist. I almost expected the brow and lashes of ‘The Eye of the Artist’ to be soft to stroke,  but of course when you get up close the nails revert to being individual pieces of hard metal, cold to the touch.

The level of detail that Levine creates is stunning, in ‘Petra, Study 2’ the woman’s hair cascades down in distinct waves, and her spine and ribs are delicately highlighted by the nails themselves and the shadows they cast. My personal favourite in the exhibition was ‘Tamas, Study 3’, a gorgeous, strong, male nude depicted using 15,100 separate nails.  The contrast between the smooth curves of the human body and the rigid spikes of the nails used to create the picture is really striking – Levine seems to revel in this contrast, choosing to show soft, delicate subjects such as a rose, and a pair of ballet shoes.

Levine’s sculptures would be works of art if they were simply sketched in pencil or charcoal, but the added dimension and tactility that the use of nails gives them lifts them off the page, both literally and figuratively!

You can see Levine in action at www.youtube.com/user/levineArt , and keep up to date with what’s going on at Cartwright Hall at www.bradfordmuseums.org .