JERZY JOTKA KEDZIORA at Schiller Park, Columbus

"Acrobats with Chairs," Jerzy Jotka Kedziora. Installed at Schiller Park,

Columbus, Ohio, 2019.

The trees are only half-bare in German Village, where selections from Polish sculptor Jerzy Jotka Kedziora's Suspension: Balancing Art, Nature, and Culture have been placed for a month. That they are suspended in our midst at all is only because of the quick work of the Friends of Schiller Park, whose president caught wind of Kedziora's show on the East Coast and finagled a stop in Columbus before it moves back to Poland.

"Acrobats with Chairs," detail. Jerzy Jotka Kedizora.

To my mind, November may be the perfect month to have high-flying sculpture. The thinned-out trees show their own bones now, exposing their linear underpinnings through the leaves they continue to shed. "Acrobats with Chairs"—two performers in positions of superhuman extension, clutching chairs on high wires—appeared silhouetted against a washy early morning sky the day I went to look. Like stage props, the larger-than-life figures catch our approaching eye and engage us in their drama. But the sculptures have two tasks: They have to engage us in this theatrical way—as distant circus or magic, as Performance—and as planted sculpture too, for when we are as close to them as we can come, our relationship with them changes.

Close-up, we are in awe of individual acrobats. They are huge, with muscles of steel! They are strong as iron to hold transient positions requiring such extraordinary flexibility. Are they made of flesh, putty, or steel? Looking up from below, the acrobats are god-like. Their extreme positions are beyond human—inconceivable—though, impossibly, there they are. "Acrobats with Chairs" is about poise, coming and going, far away and up close. It is whimsical and light on the horizon, a miracle of idea elevating heavy matter up close.

"Broken Rope," Jerzy Jotka Kedziora. Installed in Schiller Park, Columbus, Ohio.

I had walked beneath "Broken Rope" on my way to see a piece suspended above a pond without noticing it. It was on my way back to my car that I looked up and discovered the remarkable figure, even more compelling than her high-wire neighbors. She is the rope, holding two parted sections together in her hands. Perhaps a circus performer could do this, but this feels more desperate than balancing with a chair. I had an instinctive reaction that she could fall, which I hadn't felt with the pair of acrobats. I was immediately drawn into the drama of this sculpture simply by the act it represents.

"Broken Rope," detail. Jerzy Jotka Kedziora.

But, again, these works are not to be seen from a single distance or point of view, and "Broken Rope" particularly demonstrated the beauties of tree-top installation in the fall. The extreme extension of the figure's limbs against the limbs of the trees further complicates and enhances the beauty of each. The tree, which we might call "bare," becomes a busy filigree against which the bold pose of the body (star-like, not linear from this perspective) is placed. The "mighty" tree feels delicate in comparison with the fierce strength of the figure, who holds on, suspended, not even close to rooted.

"Rower," Jerzy Jotka Kedzidora. Installed in Schiller Park, Columbus, Ohio.

"Rower" sits above one of the Schiller Park ponds. The indirect morning light gave it mystery from some directions, but compared to the other works, this seemed mundane. The compact, rowing body doesn't transform itself as the viewer changes place, as the extended, flying bodies do. The big surprise here is the lack of a boat. We might see the oars as legs that walk the figure across the water, but I wasn't convinced by this piece. A view from the front had some interest; from the rear is seemed—well, to lack a mooring.

"Rower." Jerzy Jotka Kedizora.

Neither the rower nor his oars touch the water's surface. From some points of view, the wires that secure "The Rower" are distractingly apparent. Unlike the acrobats' wires, these are purely functional, and not worked into the story. As the light changes through the day, the illusion of floating will be clear from different spots, but the wires will be just as problematic from others too.

Kedziora's show continues in Livingston and Thurber Parks in Columbus as well, through November.

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