Bizarre Landscapes: Painting and Sculpture by Jonathan Hertzel
Looking at Jonathan Hertzel’s work is like seeing an image transformed into different mediums. A sculptor and a painter, Jonathan’s bronze sculptures seem like fragments of his chaotic paintings, pulled off the canvas and made three-dimensional.
The sense of movement in Jonathan’s paintings is incredible. Despite their strictly abstract nature, I find myself viewing them more as landscapes, if quite bizarre landscapes. These images have a depth that allows the viewer to see their self falling into them, or travelling through them. This notion of being “in” the paintings is solidified when looking at Jonathan’s sculptures: they take the form of large, extended brushstrokes from one of the artists paintings, brought into our three-dimensional world and given personality.
Re-Action Figures, an online gallery of sculptures by Jonathan Hertzel
Similar to the paintings, Jonathan’s sculptures are abstract, yet they still have the feeling of figures. They have a rough, unpolished texture to them and yet, as in the paintings, have a wonderful sense of clean movement.