Melvin Edwards Unchained: Ascending from “Lynch Fragments” to “Brighter Days”

For better or worse, Melvin Edwards, now 85, is probably destined always to be best known for his grimly provocative, widely exhibited “Lynch Fragments”—small wall-mounted assemblages, composed of pieces of dark welded steel (both found and fabricated), that evoke broken chains and other instruments of bondage and brutality. Four of these totemic works were acquired this year (scroll down) by the National Gallery, Washington.

By contrast, many of Edwards’ monumental recent works are luminous and uplifting, in both finish and form—a buoyancy reflected in the title—Brighter Days—of the six-sculpture grouping (to May 8, 2023) that recently brightened my mood on an appropriately sunny day at the deCordova Sculpture Park and Museum, Lincoln, MA.

Below is, for me, the most appealing of those works, with its seductively intertwined forms, its reflections of the bluest sky, and its jaunty resolution of Edwards’ broken-chain motif. Its title bespeaks triumph over adversity:

According to the deCordova’s online description, “Song of the Broken Chains,” the name of this focus show, chosen by the artist, “evokes Edwards’ optimistic view of our shared future.” (We could all use a dose of optimism during these pandemic-infected times.) This was “Edwards’ first thematic survey of outdoor sculptures and deCordova’s first outdoor solo exhibition in many years,” according to the sculpture park.

The broken links—also a recurring feature of his “Lynch Fragments”—are not the annoying disrupters that you sometimes encounter on my website. They symbolize release from the chains of slavery and imprisonment. But (as you can hear Edwards say in the video at the bottom of this post) they can also symbolize “linkage, connections—generation to generation.”

Here are four of the congenially conversing, spaciously arrayed works, with their burnished, welded stainless steel sparkling in the sumnmer sunlight…

…and here are another two, installed nearby (as you can tell from the position of the human-scaled archway, seen in both photos—“The Promise,” 1984, which “has not been seen publicly since the early 1990s,” according to its label text). The two works on the left are from the artist’s “Rockers” series:

This was the second venue for this Edwards show. Neurotically self-isolating (due to Fear-of-Covid), I had missed the first showing, which had been much closer to my home—in NYC’s City Hall Park, May-November 2021. The exhibition (there and at deCordova) was organized by Daniel Palmer, chief curator of the SCAD Museum, Savannah, GA, and adjunct curator of the NYC-based Public Art Fund.

As a lover of sculpture gardens (the link is to my WNYC radio commentary), I think I lucked out by catching “Brighter Days” at deCordova, which I had never previously visited. Here the sculptures had the advantage of breathing room, unencumbered by crowds and free of the chain-link barriers that impeded access to a couple of the sculptures at the urban venue (as seen in the foreground of this photo). Out in the countryside, there was a delightful serendipity in coming upon them while blissfully wandering among the varied offerings on deCordova’s attractive, sprawling grounds, which also included many appealing works from the New England Triennial, which occupies the indoor deCordova Museum, to Sept. 11 (with a companion show, to Oct. 2, at the nearby Fruitlands Museum, Harvard, MA).

This lively assemblage, the first work encountered upon entering the Triennial, had me at “hello.”

Although it looks a bit hokey in a photo, its provocative agglomeration of materials draws you in when you eyeball it—metal, yarn, thread, muslin, acrylic polymer, hubcap(!?), papier-maché and even a wasp’s nest at the center (at the bottom of the blue shape, above):

Just take care not to trip over the rocks which anchor it, as some clumsy visitors have done (according to the guard stationed beside it).

An aficionado of Native American art, I was arrested by these shapely baskets by Jeremy Frey, Passamaquoddy, an eighth-generation basket-weaver living in Maine, also featured in the Triennial:

The walls of these baskets are attractively textured, as you can see by examining the sides of the example in the center, above, in this close-up:

Serendipity also brought me face to face with Ioanna Pantazopoulou, a Brooklyn artist who was overseeing the installation of her Jungle Prosthetics: Enchanted Forest, which is centered on a fabricated “inverted palm tree,” surrounded by pine trees “in their fancy dress costumes, wearing bananas, coconuts and hand-welded goat bells from Greece” creating “an enchanted environment in this beautiful grove” (the artist’s words to me).

Below is a brief CultureGrrl Video of our conversation. It was a delightfully breezy day, which energized the sculpture’s dangling elements (and Ioanna’s hair), but played havoc with my video’s sound quality:

But back to Edwards now having a well-deserved late-life “moment”: He has another important focus show now on view—the Dia Art Foundation’s long-term display in Beacon, NY, of four works using barbed wire (three of which recently entered Dia’s permanent collection). According to Dia’s announcement, the works “have been reimagined for the present and will be on view here for the first time.” The three works can be seen here, but you need to click on the individual images to perceive the nearly invisible (but subtly insidious) thin strands of barbed wire. (In the image below, they are in the open passageway on the right and in the triangle to the left. The circle in the foreground is composed of chains.)

But now, let’s give the last word to the artist himself. Here’s Edwards at his current show’s recent NYC outing, looking suitably joyful about the recent surge of interest in his work, which also included a five-decade retrospective in 2015 at the Nasher Sculpture Center, Dallas:

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