Martin Puryear's spare, elegant forms whisper myriad stories. Fusing a Minimalist aesthetic with exquisite handwork, his sculptures are redolent of such far-flung pursuits as falconry, archery, basket weaving, and furniture design. Although less well known, his prints are equally rich. In fact, Puryear began his career making woodcuts and etchings to document his 1963 Peace Corps stint in Sierra Leone. These early works were destroyed in a studio fire, and Puryear didn't return to printmaking until more than thirty years later, but this quiet, illuminating exhibition—including works made between 1999 and 2005—demonstrates how he has elegantly distilled his remarkably consistent sculptural vision in two-dimensional form.

Most of the poster-size prints feature individual ovoid forms or curving lines printed in rich black on beige chine collé reminiscent of aged newsprint. For example, Profile (2002) is filled with a solid black, skewed oval—a trademark Puryear silhouette—bisected by a thin horizontal line. At the intersection, another oval in gray suggests a cross-section view, causing the image to flicker between flatness and illusory depth, between pure abstraction and the barest hint of representation. This duality echoes a similar tension evident in his sculptures, which are both pure forms and objects tinged with narratives of human labor and striving.

In some cases, the prints highlight and clarify these associations. While several of Puryear's sculptures vaguely resemble vases or jugs, the prints are more explicit. The earliest image in the show, a trial proof for Untitled (MOCA) (1999), is a less abstract version of Profile, in which the main form is a gracefully curved upside-down pot with handles. In Jug (2001), a similar shape is inverted and outlined as in an x-ray, with handles that protrude inside the vessel. By depicting containers—objects that enclose an empty space—the prints emphasize the relationship between interior volume and exterior surface that is implicit in the sculptures. On paper, inside and outside can be experienced simultaneously, an impossibility in the third dimension.

Yet the show's biggest revelation is Puryear's illustrated edition, from 2000, of the 1923 novel Cane, by Harlem Renaissance writer Jean Toomer. The seven woodcuts—each representing a female character—are lyrical, almost whimsical explorations of line, executed in white on a black ground. Some are fairly recognizable—a face with rippling hair, a drooping flower bud—while others are completely abstract. Much like Toomer's impressionistic mix of prose and poetry, Puryear's images employ a variety of approaches to summon different moods and atmospheres. Although their relationship to the text is oblique, it's refreshing to see this artist's work in such an explicitly narrative context. His sculptures often suggest as much—one refers to Booker T. Washington in its title, while others resemble useful objects such as tools and wheels—but the woodcuts bring this storytelling aspect into sharper focus.

Cane is also an interesting choice because Toomer's original version already included a visual component. His drawings of an arc—a broken circle that literary scholar Mark Whalan reads as a symbol of social division—separate the book's three sections. Puryear reinterpreted these images for his edition; it's unfortunate that they are not on view. However, this metaphor for a fractured society lends richer meaning to later works such as Loop (2002), and Untitled V (2005), which both feature a single curved line. The open arc may never be complete, but it continually invites possibility.

This feature originally appeared in the January/February 2009 issue of art on paper. Reprinted with permission.

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