THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, November 12, 1995 TAG: 9511100068
SECTION: DAILY BREAK PAGE: E7 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY TERESA ANNAS, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: Medium: 95 lines
THOMAS KOOLE'S sculpture show fills ODU's University Gallery to brimming with hybrid creations that are part organism and part machine. If every object made sounds that paralleled its appearance, visitors would run from the place until they could run no more.
The assembled forms are everywhere - crawling along and emerging from walls, commanding space on the floor, and hovering near the ceiling, as if awaiting unsuspecting prey.
Who could ever sleep in this room?
The show is truly astonishing, even eye-popping. Heironymous Bosch, the late 15th/early 16th century moralist painter, could not have devised objects that exceeded Koole's in weirdness.
His work also is reminiscent of Leonardo da Vinci's flying machines, organisms seen under a microscope and medieval instruments of torture.
The best vantage point is from the balcony overlook. From here, you can look out at the flying hybrids - and you can peer down at the largest pieces, such as ``Cauldron'' (1992), a giant bowl made of teak, copper, mahogany, cloth and acrylic.
``Cauldron'' resembles a satellite dish crossed with a wooden geodesic dome prototype and a trampoline. Such pieces look as though they had a function - but what?
In ``Cauldron,'' fabric is held taut and aloft, like a trampoline. The cloth would break a fall. But there's a hole in the center. Once the fall was broken, the person or object would be poured into the hard wooden base.
Of course, the function remains mysterious - just as the meaning of Bosch's imagery is a riddle to art historians.
Another huge piece is ``Keel'' (1995). Made of oak, mahogany, cement and stone, ``Keel'' is a cross between a flattened, upright model of an ocean liner and a keel. The tall sides of the ship are made of thin wood, amusingly tethered to the top with the thinnest copper wiring.
There is humor in Koole's assemblage, and in the forms themselves.
How these pieces are put together, and with what materials, is much of the point. Koole is a boatbuilder by profession, a fact that is traceable in his art.
Some of the works are boatlike in form, and he is especially drawn to wood, along with metals, screen, resin and other materials.
Many of the forms are like creatures that catch things in the air. They might be netting food or prey. They may be filtering pollution or bad vibes. The forms remind us of our most basic day-to-day activity: taking in and putting out, from eating to breathing.
Koole often uses resin to create cocoon-like bodies, especially spiraling ones that look like enlargements of lower life forms. These spiral pieces are reminders of the unruliness of nature and how nature is really not as depicted by Disney, Koole's neighbor in Orlando, Fla.
The steely nose cone of ``Worm'' (1995) menacingly faces the balcony, its spiraling worm body floating behind it for nearly 10 feet and growing smaller in the distance.
``Worm'' is very funny, if you compare the experience to a balcony view at the Virginia Air and Space Center in Hampton, where patrons are faced with the nose cones of polished flight machines. Instead of dropping bombs, this flying hybrid might spray the enemy with worm phlegm.
There are many smaller pieces among the dozens at the gallery. There are medieval-looking cups, scepters and rattle wands, crafted with the detailed attention of a jeweler. And there's a sharply pointed gadget called ``French tickler,'' certainly an exotic instrument of torture.
A rare richness of imagination is at work here - a dark and gothic vision.
If there is a function to Koole's work, it is to remind viewers that we may progress technologically, but we're still the same basic folks. Our need for survival, comfort, ritual and intimate relationships is the same as it was in medieval times.
Wrote Koole for his gallery statement: ``While modernism and superficial sophistication dominate our artificial surroundings, emotionally and socially little progress exists. This contradiction, this irony and the causes that perpetuate it in society are the source of my inspiration and predicate the manner of my sculpture's construction and final appearance.''
Koole has been exhibiting steadily since 1984, when he was shown in Sweden and Switzerland. Since then, he has exhibited throughout the country, including Franklin Furnace in New York. He is married to Tonja Softic, a Yugoslavian artist and former ODU student. MEMO: ON EXHIBIT
What: Sculpture by Thomas Koole of Orlando, Fla.
Where: Old Dominion University's University Gallery, 765 Granby St.,
Norfolk
When: through Dec. 3
Hours: 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. Saturday, 1 to 5 p.m. Sunday. (May be open
Fridays; call before going.)
How much: free
Call: 683-4047 or 683-2845 ILLUSTRATION: Photo of painting
``Night Vessels'' by Thomas Koole, on display at the ODU University
Gallery, includes creations of wire, cloth, resin and rubber.
by CNB