Artseen: William Corwin
It might seem an odd combination, humanity’s techno past paired with goddess figures, but that’s what some artists can do: find idiosyncratic, unlikely pairings of ideas and objects to consider. William Corwin is one such artist, as demonstrated in his current show Things: Wheels, Ladders, Teeth, Alps, Gods, Boats, Etc. at Geary Contemporary in Millerton (another Hudson Valley enclave that has become a haven for city folk.) The exhibition is a compact, intriguing, odd-couple marriage of eighteen sculptures, hopscotching back across millennia to earlier civilizations and belief systems.
His imagery is recurrent, a core ensemble that Corwin has refined over time, with variable materials. Here, nearly everything is cast metal—bronze, iron, and aluminum—which in itself is a concise history of materiality. And while the works are moderately scaled, their solidity of form makes them appear weightier, their effect more powerful than their size warrants, like that of the tiny—but mighty!—Venus of Willendorf.
Among the “things” listed in the exhibition title are gods, who are, to be more precise, goddesses (a nod to Corwin’s feminist creds), and more specifically refer to Artemis, although not in her Greco-Roman virgin huntress incarnation. His ongoing series of the goddess is based on the Artemis of Ephesus, her temple there considered one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World, associated with Ishtar, Isis, Cybele, and the other ancient chthonic deities of Asia Minor. Many of the ten Artemis statues shown here are columnar in form and so stylistically abstract that they are barely discernible as figures. Radiating a faint metallic sheen that suggests a beautifying aura, they are multi-breasted like their model (although the Ephesian Artemis’ iconography is a matter of dispute). Some are embedded with a ladder-like spine, shifting the corporeal toward the architectural and the mechanized, the latter, Corwin says, inspired by the glamourous humanoid in Fritz Lang’s 1927 film classic Metropolis. Despite the anatomical deviations and oddities, the purpose of these figures is clear: to ensure fertility and the life of future generations although the goddess has a darker side.
The other “things” listed (bringing to mind Martin Heidegger’s question, “What is a Thing?”) are wheels, ladders, boats, and teeth (yep!). All serviceable inventions (with the exception of teeth, for which, of course, we must credit nature), they have been fundamental to our well-being since their inception, a tribute to human innovation and ingenuity. Evoking objects excavated from archaeological sites, Corwin gravitates toward functional artifacts rather than gold and jewels, like the magnificent early seventh century boat unearthed in its entirety at Sutton Hoo nearly a century ago (recounted in an engrossing, laudably understated film, The Dig [2021].) It is the inspiration for his rough-hewn, weathered, surprisingly elegant boats that alternate between prototype and archetype. Vessels of exploration and passage, often outfitted with a ladder, such vessels have promoted cultural and commercial exchange globally since our earliest days. Boats were also, according to many early religions, the craft that ferried us from the natural world to the realm of the spiritual.
Corwin’s ladders, too, are poised between object and totem and come in many sizes and shapes. While ladders are utilitarian, his are often twisted, warped, on the verge of collapse, commenting on the precariousness of our survival. Wheels are another gamechanger in the history of the world. Associated with movement, change, fortuity, Corwin has translated them into free-standing ship’s wheels. One example is the crudely crafted but forceful Snug Harbor Wheel (2021) helmed by what seems to be several disembodied hands, reminding us that human hands are another crucial factor in our ascendence and survival. In Artemis Fortuna (2025), Corwin gives his goddess a wheel as an attribute, befitting her role as an arbiter of destiny.
This body of work evolved from Corwin’s long fascination with ruins and archaeology. Sifting through the remnants of earlier civilizations to emerge with his own uncanny objects to be salvaged and reappraised, he poses questions about civilization and its contingencies that are not reassuring. Despite that, Corwin, in highlighting our history of adaptability and endurance—traits that have not failed us yet—reminds us that there is always hope.