PREVIEW: Helen Pashgian

An early pioneer of the Light and Space movement, Helen Pashgian has produced numerous sculptural series composed of vibrantly colored columns, discs, and spheres that often feature an isolated element that appears suspended, embedded, or encased within the larger sculpture. Using an innovative application of industrial epoxies, plastics, and resins, Pashgian’s works are characterized by their semi-translucent surfaces that appear to both filter and contain light.

By Dimitris Lempesis
Photo: Lehmann Maupin Gallery Archive

Helen Pashgian understands each of her works as a “presence” in space which does not reveal everything at once; one must move around her sculptures to observe changes, evoking a phenomenon of constant movement. Each sculpture, along with the objects suggested within, seems to come and go, appear and disappear, approach and recede. Her solo exhibition features a series of spheres, expanding on one of the bodies of work for which Pashgian is best known. Each brightly colored sphere contains a suspended element. As light enters each sculpture, distortions, illusions, refractions, and rainbows occur as a result of the interplay between the light, reflective surfaces, and the cast forms inside. Two of Pashgian’s mounted sculptures appear to float in front of the wall; like the artists’ spheres, these works house an interior object-element. Their dark, matte materials and elliptically curved edges foster a relational effect, wherein the viewer’s visual perception and physical movement in space completes the sculptures. These wall works were the impetus for Pashgian’s columns, which stand freely in the gallery. Vastly different in shape and constructed to reference embodied and architectural forms, these works are nonetheless similar in behavior to Pashgian’s spheres and wall sculptures – they each feature an isolated element that seemingly hovers or floats within the larger structure. The semi-translucent, dark matter surface of the column appears to simultaneously filter and emit light, inviting viewers into optical and spatial interaction.  The 1960s comprised a decade of unparalleled technical innovation, and Pashgian was at the forefront, spearheading the advancement of a new artistic aesthetic. Along with other Los Angeles-based artists, including James Turrell, Robert Irwin, Larry Bell, Mary Corse, Peter Alexander, Laddie John Dill, DeWain Valentine, and Hap Tivey, she enthusiastically embraced the high-tech aerospace materials that were being developed amidst the Cold War’s space race. Refined and seductive, they imitated the slick surfaces of surfboards and automobiles that defined the postwar landscape of Los Angeles, a place where the natural and manmade coexist uniquely. Pashgian developed a mode of working in her Pasadena studio, applying the theoretical discipline and analysis she acquired in her art historical training to the evolution of her art. She began crafting meticulously polished and complex objects on an intimate scale that employed a reductive vocabulary of simple geometric forms. Cast polyester resin was a captivating but unforgiving material that relied upon an exacting chemical process and the expertise of technical skill. Accepting a residency at Cal Tech from 1969 to 1970, she collaborated with Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) engineers and scientists to study the properties of light. There, she was also introduced to the technical fabricator Jack Brogan and his workshop in Venice, which provided an invaluable resource to Light and Space artists in their unwieldy engineered works that explored the stunning possibilities of the refraction and reflection of light.  At Vito Schnabel Gallery Pashgian’s decades long explorations and innovations continue. In the artist’s “Untitled” (2018) lenses, light, color and form sublimely dissolve into one another, creating an apparition that appears to hover and pulsate in space. Luminous, palpable, and alluring, and nearly indistinguishable from the atmospheres they inhabit, the lenses are also a result of extraordinary human labor and painstaking precision. After Pashgian abandoned polyester resin for its extreme toxicity, she began to search for a new material that would yield similarly sensational optics. She experimented for years with different epoxies, testing these clear substances and assessing their stability. Here, employing cast epoxy resin, she has achieved an object that is thinner, more minimal, and highly refined than previously fabricated before. The exhibition also presents five new “Untitled” (2018) spheres. Modestly scaled at 16.5 cm in diameter, Pashgian’s latest spheres rest enigmatically atop tall white pedestals. Each contains a solid acrylic element that appears to float, suspended, within the object’s viscous internal volume. Within a smoke black orb, a clear acrylic shape whirls and churns, casting shadows and refracting light as it enters the vessel. In another multi-faceted sphere, Pashgian layers bands of color in yellow, white, blue, red, and pink. As the viewer’s position to the work shifts, so does the nature of the sphere. From one angle, colors change in saturation and hue as green emerges from layers of blue and yellow; from another, shapes appear and recede, the flat ribbons of color morphing and transforming into a spheric volume of its own within the larger sphere. Pashgian’s other spheres are cast in the primary colors of light: green, red, and blue. These works contain acrylic shapes such as pyramids, cones, and tubes. Evoking intrigue and movement, their mysterious internal complexity draws in the viewer through contemplation, slow looking, and wonder to perceive the beauty of light.

Photo: Helen Pashgian, Untitled, 2021, Cast epoxy with insert on custom artist pedestal, 6 inches (sphere), 15.2 cm. 54.5 x 3 x 3 inches (pedestal), 138.4 x 7.6 x 7.6 cm, 60.5 x 6 x 6 inches (overall), 153.7 x 15.2 x 15.2 cm, © Helen Pashgian, Courtesy the artist and Lehmann Maupin

Info: Lehmann Maupin Gallery, Slat House, The Royal Poinciana Plaza, 50 Cocoanut Row, Suite 122, Palm Beach, FLm USA, Duration: 15/12/2022-8/1/2023, Days & Hours: Tue-Sat 10:00-18:00, Sun 11:00-17:00, www.lehmannmaupin.com/