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The Daily Pic: Matt Hoyt's tiny objects stack up against modernist monuments

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"Untitled (Group 28)," by Matt Hoyt (Photo by Barb Choit, courtesy Matt Hoyt and Bureau, NY)

This “shelf sculpture” by Matt Hoyt is from his show at Bureau gallery on New York’s Lower East Side. What I like about this work is that it seems to have all the weight and ambition of the best modernist sculpture, but concentrated into the smallest possible package. Famous sculptors – Henry Moore, David Smith – sometimes worked small, but those pieces always felt like reductions of objects always meant to be big. These five little objects by Hoyt, which fill a field just 18 inches wide, feel like they punch way above their weight. Hoyt’s shelves seem to hold universes.

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Blake Gopnik is a contributing critic to Newsweek and The Daily Beast and writes on art and design for a wide range of publications. He previously spent a decade as chief art critic of The Washington Post and before that was an arts editor and critic in Canada. He has a doctorate in art history from Oxford University, and has written on aesthetic topics ranging from Facebook to gastronomy.

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