P4M ART REVIEW: TODD EBERLE AND HARRY BERTOIA AT ROBERT MILLER GALLERY

What is technology but the practical application of knowledge? For evidence of two very different but surprisingly harmonious applications, check out the Robert Miller art gallery in New York (526 West 26th Street), for an exhibition combining the work of the young photographer Todd Eberle and deceased sculptor(slash furniture and jewelry designer slash architect) Harry Bertoia (1915-1978).

Eberle, known for the revealing interior and decor shots he publishes in glossy magazines like Vanity Fair, contributes eerily sensual, large-scale photographs of vintage computer components (think '60s IBM and '80s Apple), while Bertoia is represented by several of his large-scale metal "sounding sculptures." The sculptures are kinda primally geometric and resonate visually with the crisply orthogonal lines in Eberle's computers. But that's a less powerful interplay than the one produced when viewers touch the Bertoias, as they should, and make them "sing" the way the sculptor designed them to do when installed, say, in an architectural plaza and caught in the wind. It's then that the exhibition becomes joyously clangorous, suddenly making you feel like you're in some kind of divine, or at least benevolent, machine. No mere catalog essay could do such an elegant job of describing the deep connection between such different forms of the practical.