In her fifth solo show at 303 Gallery, Liz Larner presents new works that continue her project of loosening the conventions of form, whether these be defined by the minimalist canon, the tradition of sculpture, or even the dictates of gravity and the perception of space as such. Re-examining the aesthetic archetypes established by artists such as Donald Judd, Robert Morris, and Richard Serra, Larner tests the minimalists’ assertion that color reiterates form to create “specific objects.” In this new work she allows form and color to compete, thereby producing a space that is never entirely comprehensible, as mass is divorced from density and gravity siphoned from scale.
“The ways in which the real is thought to be connected to the physical, and the relationship of sculpture to the physical--and thereby the real--have been my primary area of interest...The relationships and differences between 2-dimensional and 3-dimensional space have amazed and preoccupied me since I first began looking at, thinking about, and making art. Sculpture allows space to be seen. What we call “real space” doesn’t seem physical until something is in it.”
The Front Gallery contains a sculpture made of colored synthetic rings of indeterminate opacities, which are used to construct a space around the gallery’s central column. Also in the Front Gallery is a smaller work entitled Ignis (Fake), an obsessively complex structure that hovers in the corner like a green vapor, verging on solidifying into a cube. In the Back Gallery a familiar geometric form appears warped by imperceptible forces.
Liz Larner recently had shows at the MAK Museum in Vienna, Austria, and at the Kunsthalle Basel in Switzerland, each of which published a catalogue of her work.