ART-PRESENTATION:Carol Bove-Polka Dots

Carol Bove, From the Sun to Zurich, 2016, Photo: Dan Bradica, Courtesy David Zwirner New York/LondonCarol Bove has focused her artistic work on the large-scale interrogation and exploration of social history and art from the late ‘60s to the early ‘70s in more depth. She is equally interested in popular literature and the most popular Avant-Garde magazines of this period, as well as its architecture, music, art, and design.

By Dimitris Lempesis
Photo: Courtesy David Zwirner New York/London

Carol Bove’s solo exhibition “Polka Dots” spans on two adjacent spaces of David Zwirner Gallery in New York. South Brooklyn’s industrial landscape has been inspirational for Carol Bove, and a number of her signature materials like rusted I-beams, were originally harvested from neighborhood junkyards and building sites. Other found objects that she has used repeatedly, including peacock feathers and driftwood, relate to a Northern California aesthetic of the ‘60s and early ‘70s. While the artist was too young to have direct memories of this period, her work alludes to the ethos of that time by incorporating artifacts that symbolize its Utopian aspirations of connecting the natural and the man-made. The exhibition “Polka Dots” presents a new series of large-scale “collage sculptures” that mark a departure within her practice. To create these abstract assemblages, which merge various types of sculptural processes from her earlier works and references to art historical precedents, Carol Bove combines three different types of steel, 15 cm square steel tubing that has been crushed and shaped at her studio is arranged with found scrap metals and punctuated by shallow, highly polished discs. The new body of work is on view in both galleries along with other sculptures by the artist. In the first space, a large, white “glyph”, part of an ongoing series is positioned on the floor ahead of three collage sculptures arranged on a broad, low pedestal. The next gallery presents a configuration of the new sculptures, a glyph, and a large-scale, square steel grid. The latter acts as a kind of viewfinder into the room, which is painted a uniform matte black. The structure provides a shifting frame of the show, pictorializing relationships between the works and the viewer.

Info: David Zwirner Gallery, 525 West 19 Street and 533 West 19 Street, New York, Duration 5/11-17/12/16, Days & Hours: Tue-Sat 10:00,18:00, www.davidzwirner.com

Carol Bove, Hylomorph I, 2016, Photo: Dan Bradica, Courtesy David Zwirner New York/London
Carol Bove, Hylomorph I, 2016, Photo: Dan Bradica, Courtesy David Zwirner New York/London

 

 

Carol Bove, First Blue Column, 2016, Photo: Dan Bradica, Courtesy David Zwirner New York/London
Carol Bove, First Blue Column, 2016, Photo: Dan Bradica, Courtesy David Zwirner New York/London

 

 

Carol Bove, Luxembourg, 2016, Photo: Dan Bradica, Courtesy David Zwirner New York/London
Carol Bove, Luxembourg, 2016, Photo: Dan Bradica, Courtesy David Zwirner New York/London

 

 

Carol Bove, Polka Dots, 2016, Photo: Dan Bradica, Courtesy David Zwirner New York/London
Carol Bove, Polka Dots, 2016, Photo: Dan Bradica, Courtesy David Zwirner New York/London

 

 

Carol Bove, Second Blue Column, 2016, Photo: Dan Bradica, Courtesy David Zwirner New York/London
Carol Bove, Second Blue Column, 2016, Photo: Dan Bradica, Courtesy David Zwirner New York/London

 

 

Carol Bove, Daphne and Apollo, 2016, Photo: Dan Bradica, Courtesy David Zwirner New York/London
Carol Bove, Daphne and Apollo, 2016, Photo: Dan Bradica, Courtesy David Zwirner New York/London

 

 

Carol Bove, Mouse Hole, 2016, Photo: Dan Bradica, Courtesy David Zwirner New York/London
Carol Bove, Mouse Hole, 2016, Photo: Dan Bradica, Courtesy David Zwirner New York/London