White Cube presents ‘Mirage Collage and the Light Knots’, an exhibition of new work by Larry Bell, as part of the Inside the White Cube programme. Bell is a leading exponent of the Californian ‘Light and Space’ and ‘Finish Fetish’ movements and this exhibition will include a new series of sculpture, paintings and works on paper that continue his investigations into the transmission of light through different mediums.
Often associated with Minimalism, Bell's work has had a lasting impact on a younger generation of ‘Process-based’ artists – such as Dan Graham, Ann Veronica Jannsens or Jacob Kassay – who similarly draw from a range of industrial techniques and materials to achieve effects of translucence and shifts in perception in their work. In the early sixties, Bell worked in a frame shop where he would use the leftover materials from glazing to create collaged constructions on geometric paintings, integrating both mirrored and transparent glass to achieve spatial complexity that eventually evolved, from 1963 onwards, into his signature glass cube sculptures. With a passion for science fiction and the discovery of new production methods, Bell went on to adopt a high-tech metal coating technique for his work, a process that was used in the manufacturing of packaging, plastics or glass. Using a vacuum plating tank, Bell suspends different materials such as paper, film or glass next to a metal filament and a piece of quartz in an airtight chamber. Blasted at high temperatures both elements then sublimate into an even powdering of metallic particles resulting in an evanescent finish with subtle tonal variations that make surfaces seem to almost disappear and volumes seem weightless. Bell's sculptures transform light, allowing it to be reflected, transmitted and absorbed at the same time.
In the North Galleries, Bell will present a new series of works on paper and sculptures that further these investigations into perception, form and illusion. By applying the same vacuum coating process on various coloured papers, mylar laminate and films, Bell has produced a collage made up from interwoven coated materials in pure vivid hues. In his works on paper, he adopts a ‘Seated Nude’ motif by cutting out the curved form in coloured papers and film to suggest a female figure, dissolving alchemically in and out of abstraction. Early on in his career Bell was a keen photographer, using a panoramic camera to shoot the figure in motion, focusing on the distortion inherent from the movement of say a rolling or seated nude. Drawing from this imagery he cuts the curved forms of a figure into pieces of treated Mylar laminate and then manipulates them into what he describes as a 'Light Knot’. Suspended from the ceiling these mirrored ‘knots’ teasingly move, their forms evolving magically through the surrounding, refracted light.
In ‘Cube 24-2-92’, Bell continues to play with our perception by printing daguerreotype-like forms and grids onto the six sides of this multi-dimensional sculpture. Equally the ‘Mirage Paintings’ employ similar tricks on the eye, as they appear to be works on canvas but are actually formulated from many layers of coated materials, acrylic paint and semi-transparent laminates that act as an adhesive on the picture plane. Bell comments: “I called them ‘Mirage Paintings' because the images were created with heat and light”.
Larry Bell has shown extensively across the United States in major museum solo exhibitions including The Pasadena Art Museum (1972), Oakland Museum of Art (1973), Fort Worth Art Museum (1975 and 1977), Washington University in St. Louis (1976), Detroit Institute of Arts (1982), Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles (1986), Denver Museum of Art (1995) and Alberquerque Museum (1997). More recently solo exhibition include the Kunstmuseum Bergen, Norway which toured to the Municipal Art Museum Reykyakik (1998) and a survey exhibition at the Carré d’Art Musée d’art contemporain de Nimes (2011). Last year Bell was included in the Getty Center’s major exhibition ‘Pacific Standard Time: Art in LA 1945-1980’, part of a state-wide celebration of the West Coast contemporary art scene from the 1960’s onwards.
Image: © Larry Bell, White Cube
