February 1970
This exhibition is in two parts. At the Bykert gallery one can see the artist’s drawings and watercolors, while his most recent sculptures are on view at his enormous studio.
Beautiful mesh made objects languidly lounge along the walls or hang suspended from the ceilings of these Piranesi-like interiors. Their iridescent surfaces glisten with color and reflected light, and they appear about to move, animated by a new mysterious form of life. Bamboo poles, planks of wood, and eroded facades of galvanized tin are strewn about in a seemingly haphazard fashion. According to the artist, they are works in transition, waiting to be incorporated into some fantastic composition like the one photographed on the exhibition poster. However, even in their present disjointed state, they have an uncanny elegance and beauty. They have been touched by the hand of a master and arranged by an eye that sees the beautiful everywhere and miraculously knows how to manifest it.
If Saret’s previous sculptures revealed the artist’s deep involvement with nature, his current drawings and watercolors serve to confirm the depth and breadth of that commitment. Nature, however, is never one particular thing, nor is it ever inanimate. Trees turn into animals, animals into people. Life is surveyed from above, below, and from eye level. All things dance, sway, and play good natured games. Then, in his studio, Saret transforms this topsy-turvy two-dimensional pantheistic panorama into a mysterious realm, where solid objects are in a state of constant metamorphosis.
