Russell Maltz

Since the early 1980s, Russell Maltz has been intensively engaged with the original parameters of Constructivist art, continually developing its legacy in his own work. He makes use of classic artistic materials and compositional patterns but also of unorthodox materials such as plywood boards, glass, and concrete blocks.

This results in layered works of paper and glass in which Russell Maltz composes color and the material of the support, such as “Ballpark XXXS”, which the New York artist realized at the Württembergischer Kunstverein Stuttgart in 2002, and “Sunbeam Splay / Transfer” (2005) for the McDonough Museum in Youngstown, Ohio.

His most recent project, titled “5@5+1”, was a temporary installation in a public space. The work consisted of standard concrete wall blocks stacked on pallets. Maltz arranged the pallets, some of which had been painted bright yellow, on five building sites and in front of the Cleveland Institute of Art. These installations are at once object and event, since as temporary objects after a time they were employed in the usual fashion.

Maltz thus not only placed a symbol of art in a place seemingly remote from art but also articulated quite deliberately the rift between the producer and his product, between the functional purpose of the material and its use in art. Thus Russell Maltz manages to explore again and again entirely new dimensions and areas of influence of Constructivist art, even beyond the isolated situation of an exhibition.