If Richard Jolley's sculptures suggest that a con siderable element of alchemy contributed to their creation, this should come as no surprise. From the sensuous nude slinking over the sur face of a glowing column in his Sense of Self2000 to the ruby-red birds circling the gleaming sphere at its peak, his colors are brilliant enough to have slipped the bounds of the spectrum and to exist in some entirely separate, highly personal realm. Fragile topaz-hued crystal amphorae are jammed into a metal cage in the upper section of Jolley's Holding Thoughts, another work from the year 2000, and the emphatic features of the figure painted on its encrusted lower panel make him appear lost in rueful, all-too-human reflection.
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