Kevin Kautenburger's speciality is sculpture that closely resembles custom-made furniture and furnishings. His designs draw inspiration from the quiet elegance of Shaker design as well as from the studied simplicity and meditative quality of Asian domestic interiors. Kautenburger draws from both eastern and western domestic traditions in creating "an installation for the daydreamer" in a gallery space that was originally used as the formal reception room next to the main entrance by the owners of the Wetherill Mansion, now the Philadelphia Art Alliance building. His goal is for the installation to "almost recede into the architecture of the room."
The dominant work establishing the ambience of Kautenburger's installation is Pollen Shutters (Figs. 1 and 2), mounted on the interior of the gallery's two pairs of windows, Pollen ( a trademark material for Kautenburger) collected from the artist's own beehives is encased between glass and mirror slats in wooden frames. The slats face upward, simultaneously emitting natural light on to the gallery floor and reflecting the dimensions and decorative molding of the ceiling. The operable shutters disperse "pollenized light" through the space of the room. "It is my hope that the dusting of pollen together with the reflection of light will emit a soft glow throughout this room," Kautenburger says. "This should be a room heightened with sensations in which w simply sit."
Kautenburger treats the room as an artist's study. He situates Amber Rocker, a functional sculpture emulating an adult-size rocking chair but cast in golden amber-colored resin, in one corner of the room. SideTable/ Cricket Box, is situated in another corner. A diminutive, red cedar box with a flip up lid that rests again_st a second wooden panel framing an oval mirror coated in resin. The box resembles the face of an ·acoustic guitar, with a small, screened circular opening, and contains common house crickets. Another piece inviting literal and metaphorical reflection is Dry Basin (Fig. 3), a sculpture made of poplar, mirrors, pollen, and beeswax, placed in a corner opposite Amber Rocker. We are invited to look down in to the waist-high "basin" to gaze at our pollen-speckled reflection. A final object of contemplation, Seme/ Ant Colony (Fig. 4 )-an ant colony in the form of a Chinese scholar's table-top ornament (and filled with sand)appears on the fireplace mantle.
The impulse uniting Kautenburger's new work stems from his notion of the artist as a daydreamer. The artist's "nonproductive" studio activity is gauged by the slow passage of time marked by the activity of the any colony, the crickets' intermittent singing, and the natural light moving across the room--as well as the fugitive quality of the materials used (pollen, resin, mirrors, glass, sand, ants, crickets). This ruse of the daydreamer's studio the installation as an imaginary room for meditation and contemplation is belied by the meticulous craftmanship of the furniture-like sculpture and the deliberately meditative function of each object in the room. Kautenburger asks visitors to daydream, if only for a moment, and to draw their own conclusions from the sensations experienced in his installation/environment.
