ART CITIES:London- Larry Bell
Larry Bell is one of the most prominent and influential artists to have come out of the Los Angeles art scene of the ‘60s, he became associated with the most important movements at the time, such as Light and Space Art and what was described as “Finish Fetish” (a term coined by the art critic John Coplans). Bell has continued to investigate the complexities of highly refined surface treatments of glass, as well as large-scale sculptural installations.
By Dimitris Lempesis
Photo: White Cube Archive
The exhibition “Smoke On The Bottom” at White Cube brings together works from Larry Bell’s extensive career, from early paintings and works on paper to recent collages, centring on the large-scale installation “6 x 6 An Improvisation” (1989-2014), his largest standing wall work to date. His work was shown in the seminal group exhibitions “The Responsive Eye” (1965) at the Museum of Modern Art, and “Primary Structures” (1966) at The Jewish Museum. But unlike East Coast peers such as Donald Judd, Bell sought to bring commercial industrial processes back into his studio, and to focus instead on a meditation and manipulation of surface. Bell places experimentation and discovery at the center of his work “Control is a state of mind, not a physical reality. To me everything is experimental in the studio and that is how the work grows”. Glass has been of interest to Larry Bell since the early ‘60s when he began using it in smaller works, predominantly cubes. Its properties of transmitting, absorbing and reflecting light have been a driving force in creating works ever since. In the late 1960s he made his first large free-standing glass sculptures, or “Standing Walls” as he prefers to call them, consisting of two or more parts that were configured into corners, squares, zig-zag walls, etc. The work “6 x 6 An Improvisation” (1989-2014), was first shown at the Chinati Foundation in Marfa, Texas in 2014, it consists of 40 panels, each measuring 72 x 72 cm, a measurement relational to the artist’s own height. The partially coated glass panels represent a specific characteristic that Larry Bell developed in the sixties initially for his smaller sized cubes, and later used for the Standing Walls. Through a thermal evaporation process, a very thin layer of nickel-chrome is laid onto the glass with the result that they can become reflective like a mirror. Only half of the panels are coated while the other half remain clear and transparent. Bell has reconfigured the panels for White Cube, creating what he terms an “Improvisation”, combining clear glass, grey glass and glass coated with Inconel (a nickel/chrome alloy) which results in it becoming, to variable degrees, reflective. Arranged in right angle pairs, some that are inverted or doubled up, the sculpture forms a labyrinthine series of spaces that reflect and refract the interior architecture of the gallery. Two early paintings by Bell from 1960 show similar preoccupations with geometry and perspective. In “My Montauk” (1960), acrylic is applied opaquely onto canvas to create a monochromatic abstraction where a black rectangle is set against a white background. In “Untitled” (1960), two triangular shapes are masked out from a vivid orange background, meeting point to point in the center of the canvas, thereby suggesting an isometric projection of a three dimensional form. In a series of “Ellipse” works from the ‘80s, a central oval shape appears to float or form a portal within the composition; for instance, in “MEL 39” (1984) or “MEL 35” (1984), the varying application of coatings create a rainbow-like pattern of refracted light and optical play. Also included in the exhibition is a series of 11 new, large “Church Studies”, densely layered collages that combine various papers and films, overlaid by fencing grids and props that undergo a coating process in Bell’s vacuum thermal evaporation machine, which he has used since the mid-60s.
Info: White Cube, 144-152 Bermondsey Street, London, Duration: 28/4-18/6/17, Days & Hours: Tue-Sat 10:00-18:00, Sun 12:00-18:00, http://whitecube.com
