ART CITIES: N.York-Barbara Chase Riboud
With a career spanning over seven decades, Barbara Chase-Riboud’s innovation in sculptural technique and materiality is characterised by the interplay between folds of cast bronze or aluminium and coils of wool and silk which are knotted, braided, looped, and woven. By combining materials with different qualities such as hard and soft, light against heavy, and tactile versus rigid, Chase-Riboud’s works lend an aesthetic consideration to the sculptural base through the use of fibre ‘skirts,’ speaking to the artist’s interest in crafting forms that unify opposing forces.
By Efi Michalarou
Photo: Hauser & Wirth Gallery Archive
Internationally admired as one of the most visionary and innovative creators of her generation, Barbara Chase-Riboud in her solo exhibition “The Three Josephines” presents sculptures and works on paper. At the center of “The Three Josephines” are three bronze sculptures that pay tribute to the legendary performer, civil rights activist and World War II secret agent Josephine Baker, the fifth woman in history and the first Black woman ever, to be inducted into the French Panthéon, the national tomb of heroes. Monumental in impact, balancing power and seduction, these sculptures are the latest works from Chase-Riboud’s ongoing “La Musica” series, which explores music, movement and stillness through bold juxtapositions of materials and forms. Rising two meters tall, each of the three patinated bronze sculptures stands upon its own stage-like platform and combines hard folds of metal with sumptuous textiles. With thick coils of silk spilling down to the floor from their apices, these decidedly abstract sculptures nevertheless conjure inevitable associations with the famously sinuous limbs of their namesake––meditations upon sensuality, creativity and the effects of living in a spotlight. Surrounding these earthly deities, Chase-Riboud presents a special selection of delicate all-white works on paper. Achieved through a technique the artist has developed and perfected over the past five decades, these amalgams of sculptural relief and drawing are made by piercing silk thread through Arches paper. Evoking both the cursive lines of handwriting and figurative structure of hieroglyphics, they are formally and conceptually linked to Chase- Riboud’s automatic writings and poems. Each of the fourteen works carries a narrative title such as ‘If what was written no longer remains’ and “My last word to you is folded lengthwise and knotted”. An award-winning poet and novelist, as well as a renowned visual artist, Chase-Riboud weaves her inspirations, ideas and technical prowess from one medium to the other, viewing them all as inseparable.
Photo Left: Barbara Chase-Riboud, Josephine Red/Black, 2021, Black patina bronze with red cord, 150 x 130 x 190 cm / 59 x 51.18 x 74.8 in, © Barbara Chase-Riboud, Photo: Jo Underhill, Courtesy the artist and Hauser & Wirth Gallery. Photo Right: Barbara Chase-Riboud, Malcolm X #16, 2016, Bronze with red patina, silk, wool, polished cotton and synthetic fibers with steel support , 233.7 x 81.3 x 76.2 cm / 92 x 32 x 30 in, © Barbara Chase-Riboud, Photo: Lucia Momoh/Jeffrey Johnston, Courtesy the artist and Hauser & Wirth Gallery
Info: Hauser & Wirth Gallery, 134 Wooster St, New York, NY, USA, Duration: 8/11-23/12/203, Days * Hours: Tue-Sar 10:00-18:00, www.hauserwirth.com/
