Opening at the Goldleaf Gallery (inside Goldleaf Framemakers of Santa Fe) on Friday, September 12, 2008 from 5:30 to 7:30 pm.

This exhibition of recent, strongly formal, work by Henry Noestheden will include six metal reliefs hung on the wall as well as sculpture in the round.  The hand of the artist has been removed as much as possible, but the recognizable structures and sets of rules upon which the works are based, derive in part from traditional Dutch still life and landscape painting. Three aluminum "still lives" each feature a single simple shape, in extremely slight relief, placed on a square field that has one horizontal shift in depth in order to suggest a table top.  Three machined "landscapes" deal only with horizontal shifts in planes, indicating the traditional land/sky horizon line. Noestheden paints these reliefs black, making them even subtler. In one Brancusi-inspired, polished brass work, a three dimensional half sphere rests, just barely tilted. Its circular surface has been ever so slightly scooped to form a concave meniscus. The eye may not even understand why it feels such a compelling, satisfying tension.