ART CITIES: London Robert Irwin & Mary Corse

The exhibition “Parallax”, brings together the work of two pioneering artists:  Robert Irwin and Mary Corse. Marking the first time their work has been brought into direct dialogue, this exhibition explores the intersections and convergences between these two artists’ radical experiments with light, perception, and the role of the viewer.

By Efi Michalarou
Photo: Pace Gallery Archive

The exhibition “Parallax”, comes at a significant moment for both artists, each of whom has been recognized by the Dia Art Foundation this year for their significant contributions to American art. Robert Irwin, whose work “Full Room Skylight – Scrim V – Dia Beacon” (1972/2022) is currently the subject of an exhibition at Dia Beacon, while Mary Corse, who was the subject of an exhibition at Dia Beacon, will receive her honour in October. While both artists developed work that is intimately connected to the distinctive conditions of Southern California in the 20th century, they worked independently and never had a direct relationship. Irwin was more closely associated with the Light and Space movement, which eschewed the practice of object-making; while Corse developed her own independent path, developing a phenomenological mode of painting. At stake for both Corse and Irwin, however, is the abstract nature of human perception. Since the 1950s and 60s, they have each explored modes of artmaking that transcend and subvert convention to create multi-sensorial experiences of viewing. Widely considered the originator of the California Light and Space movement, Irwin’s longstanding relationship with Pace spans seven decades. Arne Glimcher, the gallery’s founder, first exhibited Irwin’s work in New York in 1966, introducing his radical innovations to an East Coast audience for the first time. Since the Sixties, Irwin has influenced numerous subsequent generations of artists and charted new frontiers in contemporary theory and praxis. It was in the context of this innovative time in the 1960s that Corse, seventeen years Irwin’s junior, began her own artistic practice that pursued entirely different terrain. Unlike Irwin, who abandoned his early work as a painter in favor of a sculptural practice involving pure light, Corse remained committed to the possibilities of painting. She began working with shaped, bevelled-edge canvases, plexiglass lightboxes powered by tesla coils, and, most significantly, glass microspheres, which she developed a technique of layering onto the surface of her paintings. Despite their divergent practices, both artists embraced the presence of the viewer as the primary component of the work, harnessing light and shadow as both subject and material. Irwin’s ongoing “Unlight” series is the latest development in the artist and theoretician’s career-long investigation into human perception and the phenomenological conditions of light and space. Playfully titled after blues and rock albums, the “Unlight” works are comprised of arrays of six-foot long fluorescent tubes installed vertically on the wall, each unlit bulb shrouded in translucent gels and electrical tape. Rhythmically interspersed between the glass bulbs are empty aluminum fixtures and panels of grey and blue paint applied directly onto the gallery wall. Stretching over four meters in width, Irwin’s large-scale installations, made from humble, industrial materials, produce opulent results, oscillating as the viewer moves through space, to expand beyond their peripheral vision and draw their gaze into the works’ dynamic and complex depths. Irwin identifies the materials for the “Unlights” not by their physical components, but by their intangible qualities: “Shadow + Reflection + Color”. By responding only to the available light in a given space and removing any emitted artificial light from this body of work, Irwin not only subverts expectation but also invites viewers to consider the conditions of the space that surrounds them. The unlit bulbs—some cloud grey, others jewel-toned—absorb and amplify the atmospherics in the room, capturing and casting shadows, glinting in the changing light as visitors’ bodies move across and through the room, attempting to decipher what is two- or three-dimensional, ‘real’ or illusion. Corse’s large-scale “White Inner Band” paintings hinge on a similarly dynamic relationship between the viewer and the phenomenological conditions created between the space and the work. Corresponding to the viewer’s position across the exhibition space, these bands seem to appear and disappear from one’s field of perception. Corse achieves this effect through her use of glass microspheres, a material she began experimenting with in 1968. Over the last 55 years, this industrial material has become central to Corse’s painting practice, which she transmutes into a dynamic illumination within her gestural brushstrokes. The resulting works are highly sensitive to the lighting conditions of the space around them, bending and refracting light which radically alters one’s perception of the painting. As viewers navigate the space surrounding Corse’s “Inner Band” paintings, the minuscule glass prisms glow, darken, and glimmer in turn, revealing the full spectrum of hues contained within their white light while generating a state of perpetual flux in the hard-edge geometries of the work . The bevelled edges of the works push their surfaces out and away from the wall, lending the picture plane an ethereal quality that appears as though hovering indeterminately in space. Corse’s work depends entirely on the physical presence of the viewer to be fully realized, creating an active dialogue between painting, viewer, and environment. “The art is not on the wall,” Corse has explained, “it’s in the viewer’s perception”. Where Irwin’s “Unlight” works draw ambient light into their depths, Corse’s paintings refract light outwards. Placed in conversation with one another for the first time, this exhibition explores the interaction between the two artists’ ideas of phenomenology (a term that denotes philosophical inquiry into sensory experience) in which visitors are invited to examine their own process of perception. Irwin’s site-specific installation in the lower ground floor gallery addresses a different set of concerns, and can be understood as a continuation of his recent major project at Kraftwerk Berlin, organized by LAS Art Foundation. In London, Irwin divided the gallery in two, each side painted in imperceptibly different hues. On the walls, Irwin constructed a rhythmic interplay of lit fluorescent tubes and painted sections to enliven the space. Orchestrating light, space, and color to create an immersive experience, this work epitomizes the central tenets of Irwin’s approach to creating a “conditional art” that depends entirely on the specificity of a given space.

Photo left: Robert Irwin, SWEETNESS, 2023, Shadow + Reflection + Color, 182.9 cm × 404.5 cm × 10.8 cm © Robert Irwin / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. Photo right: Mary Corse, Untitled (White Multiband with White Sides, Beveled), 2023, acrylic and glass microspheres on canvas, 243.8 cm × 198.1 cm × 11.4 cm, © Mary Corse

Info: Pace Gallery, 5 Hanover Square, London, United Kingdom, Duration: 10/10-11/11/2023, Days & Hours: Tue-Sat 10:00-18:00, www.pacegallery.com/