M ICHAEL BOLUS, currently showing at the Waddington Gallery, is among
the recently established small number—it isn't a group—of young sculptors hell-bent on redefining not only the entire character of sculpture but also its particular function, the specific part it can play in life at this moment. Not life last year, or last week, but now. Exasperatingly enough these young sculptors are so far condemned to pro- ject their discoveries only within the restricted and totally artificial orbit of dealers' galleries or, with occasional luck, as part of a wider cor- porate or shared demonstration like the recent 'New Generation' show which the Peter Stuyvesant Foundation made possible earlier this year (trustfully, I must say, considering the nevi-planet nature of most of the work in ques- tion). To use the word 'condemned' for almost any averagely gifted young artist nowadays is to strike, perhaps, an unnecessarily sentimental note: young artists have never had so many chances of financial backing or amiable oppor- tunities for going through their paces in an occasionally almost mindlessly permissive situa- tion. And that 'artificial orbit' of the dealers' galleries has never been more alert, encouraging, crisply intelligent or useful—in financial back- ing and general encouragement for the artists themselves, and in providing all the oppor-
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