August 22, 2025
In the popular imagination, math and poetry are opposed. But like intention and accident or life and death, they converge in the end.
For Alan Saret, the hanging wire sculptures he has been making since the 1970s, and which make up “Galacticonexus” at Karma Gallery, are math. He develops them according to his own algorithms, and in a piece like “Two to Ten Rising,” which expands in steady rings from ceiling to floor, it’s easy to see that there’s a pattern, even if it’s not easy to discern what it is. In Saret’s telling, the pieces also allude to the fact that nothing we call solid matter is really anything but intersecting lines of vibrating energy.
For me, though, the appeal of his hanging bundles of wire is their sheer visual range. “Percolation” evokes the choral unities of an orchestra so richly that I could almost hear the violins — but it also reminded me of clotted hair in a bathtub drain.
“Allegra,” a rhizome so fussy that it set my teeth on edge, seems to be made of coat hanger necks. A series of red wire pieces look like discarded costumes for an esoteric ritual, patiently waiting their turn to be worn, and a 7½-foot piece called “Thunderhead” is how the Archangel Gabriel might appear if he came back as a cloud (or a giant jellyfish). Of course, these are all very personal comparisons; you’d be sure to see things differently. That’s the poetry.
