Ping-Pong Topo Map

JASON WOOD

Details

Crawl Space, 504 E. Denny Way, 201-2441, www.crawlspacegallery.com. Ends Dec. 16

Related Content

• The KAC Links Invitational
  June 16, 2010
• The Weekly Wire: The Week’s Recommended Events
  June 23, 2010
• My To Do List, For Tonight (It's First Thursday Y'All) and This Weekend
  March 6, 2008
• Saturday Night: Crawl Space Fundraiser
  November 16, 2007
• New Sculpture Survey
  July 12, 2006

More About

• Jason Wood

Like this Story?

Sign up for the Events Newsletter: What's happening in town? From underground club nights to the biggest outdoor festivals, our top picks for the week's best events will always keep you in on the action.

Privacy Policy Cancel Continue

You have to crouch to get close to Jason Wood's Pong Tectonics, a sculpture composed of several blue-faced Ping-Pong paddles, with small, sanded, plywood mountains atop them. At Crawl Space's recent fund-raising shindig, the edges of this ankle-high sculpture were dribbled with wine, and I wondered, why the low platform? But then Wood's work is often positioned on the floor, most notably his striking self-portrait fashioned out of yellow pencils, sharp graphite tips up (seen at Crawl Space in 2005, before it traveled to Howard House). Amidst the crush of bodies at the gallery that evening, most of the work on view—a group show by gallery members called simply "Current Works"—was near impossible to get to, but Wood's piece was more accessible. Looking very much like sculptural shorthand for a topographic chart, the primary blue rubber sheets read like bodies of water, pooling between the smooth-surfaced, mountainous forms. As his bio states, Wood is a "product of the union between a carpenter father and an artist mother." Appropriately enough, he often works in wood. This sculpture seems to be a reminder of the "toys" of all kinds we manufacture from forests, while, on a larger scale, serving as some sort of model landscape.