This exhibition explores the ways that ideas become form, and it features a range of artists represented in the Museum’s permanent collection, some being presented to our audiences for the first time. Sculptures using materials including wood, plastic, metal, and rope are situated in distinct areas of the gallery, activating space on walls, floor, and pedestals, some requiring electrical outlets to illuminate bulbs and power LED circuits.
Dialogue is established between generations of practitioners, as in the pairing of a geometric aluminum sculpture by Sol LeWitt (Incomplete Open Cube) with a somewhat organic work by his daughter, Eva LeWitt (Big Yellow Rope), each exploiting aspects of solidity and linear movement in precise ways.
R.M. Fischer and Hannah Smith create assemblages that can seem simultaneously familiar and exotic, referencing mass-produced lamps and commercial signage. They make precise decisions about hardware, finish, and degrees of functionality.
Additional works by Beverly Semmes, Robert ParkeHarrison, and Raymond Barnhart focus on acts of accumulation, modelling and touch, and evocative color.
Accompanying the sculptures are several prints from the New York Collection for Stockholm Portfolio from 1973, including canonical artists Lee Bontecou, Mark di Suvero, Donald Judd, Claes Oldenburg, Robert Rauschenberg, and Richard Serra investigating aspects of representation and abstraction with their signature styles of drawing.
IMAGE: Hannah Smith, Messy, Messy Choices, 2024, 3-D modeled and printed resin, programmed Arduino Nano and LED circuit, and dyed cotton. Collection of the UK Art Museum, purchase: Collectors Fund.
