Help Me, I'm Falling

There is an unexpected benefit of this unintended monotony for those of us who have long admired the work for which Trova is best-known (the Boca Museum has three of his sculptures in its permanent collection, at least one of which is usually on display upstairs in the contemporary galleries). And that is that we are forced to seek variety in his work in other media. Here the exhibition shines.

The show includes several suites of Trova's lesser-known graphic work, including serigraphs that take the basic "falling man" motif and subject it to all kinds of permutations. It turns out that the artist has a delightful flair for color and composition that you'd never guess from the sculptures.

Most surprising of all is a trio of mixed-media assemblages from 1961, very early in Trova's career, that are about as far removed from his "falling men" as you could imagine. Conway Twitty Came, Blue Jean Figure, and Man in Fur Hat are wonderfully messy affairs in which the clothes literally make the men or, more accurately, suggest them. It's as if the ostensible subjects of the images have been stripped of their clothing and then dismissed, leaving the artist to re-create their presence. I have no idea whether Trova stopped dabbling in such droll, collage-like work when he embarked on the Study/Falling Man course he has pursued for more than four decades. As much as I like many of his "falling men," however, I would love to know where that other path might have taken him. That's the most tantalizing question raised by this retrospective.