In late February, prior to COVID-19 closures of cultural institutions and non-essential businesses in NYC, I went to check out Larry Bell's Still Standing at Hauser & Wirth in Chelsea.
A Standing Wall by Larry Bell at Hauser & Wirth
Bell is known for his reflective glass cube sculptures (example here) as well as experiments with special surface treatments that push "the optic possibilities of glass as a medium." The exhibit showcases work he created from 1970 to the present, including two recent 8-foot-high glass "Standing Walls" or icebergs. According to the press release the "exhibition charts a less explored, but seminal moment in Bell’s practice when he began to radically deconstruct his signature glass cubes into the more architecturally-scaled, fragmented, crystalline forms or what he referred to as 'standing walls.'"
In the late 1960s Bell "found that the most interesting part of the cubes was where the corners came together. The next logical step was to focus on making big corners, resulting in the Standing Walls," according to the artist's website. He began working with a vacuum coating machine to treat panels of glass allowing "light to be reflected, transmitted and absorbed simultaneously," his website adds. "During the plating process, thin metal films are deposited onto another material, mainly glass...." This process allowed him to create his large-scale glass installations that "were rendered partly mirrored and partly transparent through the vacuum deposition procedure, thereby making the glass surfaces almost disappear and volumes become weightless. The colours which become visible are known as 'interference colour'; an illusion which results when light hits the sculptures’ surface."
Larry Bell, Griffins Fracture, 1977
A Standing Wall by Larry Bell at Hauser & Wirth
An earlier work from 1977, Griffins Fracture, creates an imposing corner in sleek dark glass. One of his two recent Standing Walls, a labyrinth of one black and three white glass panels, resembles sheets of origami paper skillfully folded into sharp right triangles. The second, composed of one pink panel and three in varying shades of blue, is lined up in straight a row—the pieces appearing to neatly nest within each other. As viewers circle each stunning work the translucent pieces interact with one another forming different shadows, hues, and forms.
Installation view of Larry Bell. Still Standing at Hauser & Wirth
Larry Bell, Untitled, 1985, vacuum coated glass, 5 parts
Larry Bell, Untitled, 2019
Larry Bell at Hauser & Wirth
Still Standing also features a number of small-scale studies and sculptural works that illustrate Bell's process and examinations into surface, color, and reflection. He meticulously transforms glass into grand, radiant structures that offer a wonderful array of perspectives.
Bell was born in Chicago in 1939 and attended Chouinard Art School [now CalArts] in Los Angeles where he was a student of Robert Irwin's. One of the leading artists of Southern California's Light and Space Movement in the 1960s, Bell currently divides his time between Los Angeles and Taos, New Mexico. Learn more at larrybell.com and hauserwirth.com.
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