Donald Lipski's recent exhibition, "Exquisite Copse," was a collaborative effort with Jonquil LeMaster, a celebrated artificial-tree builder whose "Jungle World" is on permanent view at the Bronx Zoo. The show had its genesis in the monumental sculpture produced by the pair for the renovation of Grand Central Station. That piece, titled Sirshasana, is an inverted faux olive tree with crystal leaves that fills the domed ceiling above the entrance to the station's market. That public commission inspired Lipski to create similar but smaller works, mostly parts of trees, which were brought together in a forestlike configuration at Galerie Lelong.
Odd juxtapositions and assemblages have always played a major role in Lipski's oeuvre, including the American flag-wrapped scissors of 1990 and the salt-filled leather couches of 1993. (A show of his older work was simultaneously on view at John Gibson Gallery.) At Galerie Lelong, the rounding up of disparate objects was one of the primary themes. Lipski combines artificial tree trunks, made of polyester resin, with found objects such as machetes, pickaxes, shears and saddle racks. In one sculpture, baseballs cling to a tree trunk like fungal growths, while in another, a glass tube with typed text is submerged in a trunk shaped like a large dog bone. Another work consists of the stump of a tree that has grown around a rusty doorknob and lock. The combinations, all of which were dramatically lit, often create strange associations. A small branch that is pierced by a pair of garden shears and sits atop a classicized wall bracket with Corinthian details suggests a large-winged bird that has just landed. The tips of the shears morph in the imagination into feet, and the handles into wings.
Many of the assemblages are disconcerting, while others are witty. For instance, one log is tied in a knot and hangs from the wall; another forms a continuous ring that hangs from a rack; one is shaped like a cone and sits on the floor. What makes these otherwise bland objects exciting is the absurd element, an idea crucial to Surrealists like Rene Magritte and Meret Oppenheim, the latter most renowned for her 1936 cup, saucer and spoon lined with fur. Lipski declares a link with the Surrealist movement in his exhibition title, "Exquisite Copse," a woody pun on the Surrealist exercise called "exquisite corpse," whereby an image was produced by several artists working on the same sheet of paper, one supplementing the previous artist's drawing with his/her own, without looking at the prior work. Lipski's version of Surrealism is innovative and refreshing.