wallpaper.com, March 7, 2008

In the thousands of anodized aluminum-plated Styrofoam blocks that form the sculptures in his solo show 'Empire', Brooklyn-based artist John Powers builds on the tension between man and machine that has defined much of the last 50 years of American art.

Spilling out of one corner of the gallery, small, angular crystalline forms look like pieces from a Tetris game gone off the Gameboy. Two other works, 'Anarcha' and 'Phineas Gage', grow from walls; one is a shard-like boxy mushroom, the other a shattered disco ball. And then, dominating the center of it all, is the show's namesake, a giant floating orb that invokes the final explosive moments of the Death Star.

The pieces are so detailed your mind turns to computers and pegs the sculptures as products of some factory machine. But that's exactly the point. 'These are moments where industry meets the artisanal,' Powers says. Though sleek and shiny, the sculptures are living proof of very human processes—sketching, calculating, arranging, gluing—at work.

The foam blocks are mass-produced, but the intricate, seven-sidedly symmetrical pattern Powers arranged them in to make his giant sphere is pocked with breaks, moments where the artist has ripped chunks out. The process is ongoing: 'Spiral Jedi', that Tetris-like assemblage in the corner, grows every few days when Powers adds a new piece to the pile.

This tension plants Powers at a crossroads between the detached Minimalism of Tony Smith (who famously ordered his seminal sculpture 'Die' over the phone from a factory) and the active power of Abstract Expressionism. The pieces might seem space-age, but they are grounded in human action and visceral feeling. Considering where to put the newest part of 'Jedi', Powers doesn’t hesitate: 'Wherever looks cool.'