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"Unquestionably the most
intriguing pieces from a technical point of view are the minature figures by Elliott Jay
Arkin. Using a synthetic clay he pre-colors and later bakes in the over, Mr. Arkin
fashions remarkably detailed scale models of exaggerated characters – not trompe
l’oeil humans in the manner of Duane Hanson, but theatrically supercharged effigies
designed to provoke close-up inspection. Like stop-animations, Mr. Arkin’s sculptures
have a cartoonlike quality." |
"Among the best is the array of small
colored clay figures by Elliott Jay Arkin. Arkin models of the downtrodden, the desparate
and the demonic are a vision out of the darkest Bosch, by way of the Belgian satirist
James Ensor. In fact, the bizarre carnival figures, skeletons and hanged men appearing in
Ensor’s paintings resurface in three dimensional form in several of Arkin’s
sculputures..Here is an artist with a special, if pessimistic viewpoint, and uncommon
skills to go with it." – Karen Lipson, Newsday |
"These figures share more of a
relationship to the work of Charlie Ray, Ron Mueck, or Steve Balkenhol. Arkin’s small
people exude a kind of eerie lifelike quality that seems to coincide with the digital age
and super-animation. The high-powered Japanese model arts come to mind. The relationship
his work shares with Mueck or Balkenhol, is that the figures seem to have processed from a
two-dimensional image. Although Arkin’s figures are usually actual living people, the
real people have been turned into animation figures; accurately reproduced back into
three-dimensional objects. This is the departure from traditional sculpture and something
he shares with the leading edge of the field." |
