Southampton - The Parrish Art Museum, in partnership with Mary Boone Gallery and the Village of Southampton, will inaugurate a major installation of four monumental sculptures entitled "Jacks" by American artist Mel Kendrick. The installation will remain on view through December.

The works, made of concrete cast in alternating layers of black and white, are simultaneously massive and playful. Standing 11' high, each sculpture features a block-like pedestal upon which sit intersecting cylinders that rest on points, like a child's toy jacks. The block-like bases, resting at eye level, create a sense of a horizon or plane which separates a visual sensation of mass "above and below." This divide encourages the perception that the animated and freestanding forms on top have been extracted from the voids created by punctuations in the massive foundation. Of course, given the weight and mass of the material, this would be a physical impossibility. The alternate black and white banding of the concrete evokes the epochal "laying down" of geology and the methodical "building up" of architecture. Kendrick has also said, "I was strongly influenced by the black-and-white marble in Italian Gothic churches like the Duomo of Siena."

Kendrick is known primarily for his sculptural work in wood, bronze, rubber, paper, and, most recently, cast concrete. Kendrick's work reflects a deep fascination with process, space, and geometry.

Born in Boston, Massachusetts, Kendrick attended Trinity College, Connecticut before he moved to New York City where he studied at Hunter College under Tony Smith and worked for Dorothea Rockburne. His first solo show at Artists Space was in 1974. Since then he has had some 40 solo shows and numerous group exhibitions. His most recent works have focused on monumental cast concrete forms, such as the "Markers" installation in Madison Square Park and "jacks."

Kendrick's work can be found in numerous permanent collections, including The Art Institute of Chicago, The Brooklyn Museum, The Dallas Museum of Art, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Museum of Modern Art, The National Gallery of Art, The Philadelphia Museum of Art, The Storm King Art Center, and the Whitney Museum of American Art. Kendrick is represented by Mary Boone Gallery in New York.

The Museum's programs are made possible, in part, with public funds from the New York State Council on the Arts, celebrating 50 years of building strong, creative communities in New York State's 62 counties, and the property taxpayers from the Southampton School District and the Tuckahoe Common School District.