Those who encounter the stellar parallel exhibitions by two unlikely friends, Malcolm Morley and Richard Artschwager, (Morley [1931-2018]; Artschwager [1923-2013]) at the Hall Art Foundation in Vermont, may wonder what deep affinity between them existed. Despite the differences in Morley's and Artschwager's stylistic and material approaches, their treatment of plastic representation, case by case explores issues of the phenomenology of perception, memory and displacement, birth and death, manmade and natural environments, the news, consumptive culture, and above all anxiety, destruction and violence. Each carved out a unique synthesis of image and object: both relentlessly and restlessly interrupted the conventions of art-be it subject matter or how an artwork should look according to its surrounding space and the times.
