Experimental Artist Larry Bell's Six Decade Career Survey Opens In Phoenix This May

This spring, Phoenix Art Museum presents Larry Bell: Improvisations, showcasing the artistic achievements and career of one of the most influential artists to emerge from the Light and Space movement.

The survey explores the progression of Bell's process from the 1960s through the present day, featuring a wide range of glass cubes, sculptures, large-scale standing walls, and mixed-media collages Bell created using a cutting-edge vacuum deposition technique. Larry Bell: Improvisations is on view from May 22, 2024, through January 5, 2025, at Phoenix Art Museum in the Katz Wing of Modern Art.

“We are excited to bring together this captivating body of work by the Light and Space artist Larry Bell,” said Jeremy Mikolajczak, the Sybil Harrington Director and CEO of Phoenix Art Museum. “Bell has dedicated his practice to investigating and perfecting techniques to create his distinctive work, and this survey not only celebrates his achievements across a notable 60-year career but his influence on the field of contemporary art and our understanding of how art can shape the ways we perceive our environment and reality.”

Born in Chicago in 1939, Larry Bell is an experimental artist who has long explored interactions between light and surface through glass sculpture, monochrome painting, collage, and furniture design. First recognized for his central role in the Light and Space movement of the 1960s alongside Robert Irwin, Ed Ruscha, James Turrell, and others, Bell began his career by creating cubic volume using shaped canvases and incorporating mirror, wood, and glass. Early on, he discovered a vacuum deposition technique that allowed him to transfer thin film deposits onto glass panes, resulting in his early cubes that had dazzling visual effects. From there, Bell used light as a medium to home in on how different surfaces reflect, absorb, and transmit light. He went on to use a vacuum tank and later a mounting press to experiment with heat and vapor-coated paper, resulting in various series of collage works.

Larry Bell: Improvisations demonstrates the progression of Bell's practice through a wide selection of glass sculptures and collage works from the 1960s to today. Visitors begin by surveying a selection of smaller scale glass cubes that appear either in their entirety or deconstructed alongside other smaller works that explore the right angle, underscoring Bell's fascination with geometric elements. Next, large-scale standing walls composed of 12 pieces of solid glass reveal how Bell scaled up his cubic investigations to installations and environments. Each standing wall is configured on-site, their shapes created in direct response to their settings. At 6 feet tall, they affect viewers' perception, emphasizing the relationship between perceived versus physical realities. Exemplifying Bell's most recent work, Improvisations debuts a selection of Light Knot sculptures that suspend from the ceiling and appear to dance as they absorb and reflect the surrounding light, along with one newly commissioned large-scale work—a cubic form representing the mercurial sun, surrounded by clouded glass evocative of the fog of Venice Beach, California.

In addition, Improvisations features rarely exhibited collage works from the Phoenix Art Museum Collection, including examples from Bell's Vapor Drawings (1978-present), Mirage series (1980s-present), and Fraction series (1996-2001). These works on paper mirror the reflective, ambiguous, and spatial qualities of Bell's sculptural works and were created by submitting mylar, paper, and other materials to the vacuum deposition technique and mounting press.

“Throughout the exhibition, visitors discover the intuition, spontaneity, and improvisation inherent in Larry Bell's process,” said Rachel Sadvary Zebro, the Museum's associate curator of collections and the exhibition's curator. “Across each decade, Bell has experimented with new techniques and materials, but what is abundantly clear when considering the works in Improvisations is that Bell always returns home—to the cube.”

About the Exhibition

Larry Bell: Improvisations is organized by Phoenix Art Museum and curated by Rachel Sadvary Zebro, associate curator of collections at Phoenix Art Museum. It is made possible through the generosity of Lee and Mike Cohn. All exhibitions at Phoenix Art Museum are underwritten by the Phoenix Art Museum Exhibition Excellence Fund, founded by The Opatrny Family Foundation, with additional significant support provided by Joan Cremin.

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