Major show by Caribbean-American sculptor opens Feb. 9 at Laumeier
By Chris King
Of the St. Louis American
Karyn Olivier wants to play with you.
This Caribbean-American sculptor with a major show opening at Laumeier Sculpture Park in St. Louis County on February 9 may have climbed near the top of the often-stuffy art world, but it’s been like a girl’s climb to the top of the monkey bars.
“Monkey Bar,” in fact, is the title of one of her pieces, a hand-carved reminder of the possibilities of childhood.
“When you are a kid, you believe anything is possible,” Olivier told the American by phone from New York, where she lives and just completed an Artist in Residence stint at the Studio Museum in Harlem.
“I can’t go back to childhood, but I can take this with me.”
“Monkey Bar” is typical of the work in her Laumeier show, Karyn Olivier – A Closer Look, in that it is personal and playful. Its being hand-carved by the artist sets it apart, though.
She said the work in the show reflects nostalgia not only for her own past but for an earlier moment in art history, the aesthetic movement of minimalism.
“In minimalism, works were typically made by manufacturing,” Olivier said.
“The artist wanted the viewer to be part of the work. It was not about the work being handmade by the artist.”
Much of Olivier’s work also borrows from the simplicity of minimalism. She said she often is looking for “a simple form, a single gesture” that is then manufactured by others according to her design and directions.
Her oeuvre ends up looking like an abstract playground, with pieces like “Monkey Bar,” “Double Slide,” “Tether-ball” and “Seesaw.”
“Seesaw” will not make an appearance in St. Louis, as all 40 feet of it now sit in a collector’s backyard, where she sincerely hopes it enjoys more than admiring looks.
She really does want to play with you.
“I’ll want people to use the ‘Double Slide,’” Olivier said of a sculpture that will be installed at Laumeier – two slides joining at the bottom into one, in an exploration of intimacy and risk.
“But the museum won’t let you. So I’ll want somebody to buy it and interact with it then. You become the sculpture.”
As a black sculptor who makes minimalist playground forms, Olivier has heard her work compared to the silhouettes of stark urban playgrounds. But that doesn’t get to the heart of her identity.
She was born in Trinidad and Tobago and continued to spend summers there with her grandmother after her family moved to Brooklyn. This gives her a dual consciousness, African-American and Caribbean.
“Most slaves who were sent to the Caribbean knew where their peeps were and so were able to maintain a sense of their history,” Olivier said.
“My sense of identity is so grounded, so strong.”
At the same time, her school experience in this country is typical of many high-achieving black students and may account for some of the loneliness in her isolated playground forms.
“I was the only black student in grad school (at Cranbrook Academy of Art),” she said.
“They called me ‘OB1’ – the Only Black One.”
The Only Black One will have the first show at Laumeier Sculpture Park in February, Black History Month, reflecting the county institution’s efforts to diversify its collection and its audience. Let’s not forget that, through its concert series, Laumeier was the last institution in St. Louis to host the late James Brown.
Though her roots in Trinidad and Tobago and Brooklyn are certainly as “black” as anybody would ever need to be, what Olivier is seeking in her work, she said, is at the core of everyone.
“What is at the core of this work is what is at the core of all of us,” she said.
“As much as I use materials in my sculptures, I want people to come to them to actuate the core of us, what we can’t touch, what’s intangible. That’s what I really want to get to.”
Karyn Olivier – A Closer Look runs from February 9 – May 13 in Laumeier’s indoor galleries, with a Feb. 9 reception from 5-7 p.m.
Laumeier Sculpture Park is located at 12580 Rott Road in Sunset Hills, near I44 and Lindbergh Boulevard. The park is open daily from 8 a.m. until ½ hour past sunset. The museum is open Tuesday through Friday from 10 a.m. until 5 p.m. and Saturdays and Sundays from 12 p.m. until 5 p.m.
Call 314-821-1209 or visit us at www.laumeier.org.
