John McCracken, New Works in Bronze and Steel, image courtesy of the artist and David Zwirner
David Zwirner is currently presenting a new body of work by Californian artist John McCracken. McCracken first gained international recognition with his monochromatic geometries placed between flat surfaces and three-dimensional objects. In the present exhibition, he addresses the gallery space as a whole, allowing its architecture and light to participate fully in the installation. In the first room, three bronze planks lean against the wall, in an apparent departure from the materiality of his previous works in fiberglass and resin, while continuing to work in his signature format – the narrow, rectangular, monochromatic panel. Their shiny, reflective surfaces introduce the exhibition’s key motifs, inserting them into a dialogue, both formally and conceptually, with the four free-standing stainless-steel sculptures in the adjacent room: Star, Infinite, Dimension and Electron.
More text and images after the jump…
John McCracken, New Works in Bronze and Steel, image courtesy of the artist and David Zwirner
Despite their individualized, almost solitary condition, the works are deeply interconnected through interplays of lights and shadows. Their appealing form and presence invites the viewer to approach them closely, and to participate in a game of mirroring and reflection, in which colors and shapes resonate from one room to the other. Addressing ideas of minimalism and monumentality, scale and position, these sculptures open up the space they inhabit, revealing the details of their surrounding environment as much as absorbing the movements around them. According to McCracken, “The sculptures become in a sense kinetic, changing more radically than one might expect.” He introduces the element of movement to address the position and role of sculpture beyond questions of dimensionality and color.
John McCracken, New Works in Bronze and Steel, image courtesy of the artist and David Zwirner
John McCracken, photo by Gail Barringer courtesy of David Zwirner
John McCracken was born in 1934 in Berkely, California, and currently lives and works in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Since the 1960s, he has exhibited widely in the United States and abroad, including historical exhibitions such as Primary Structures at the Jewish Museum in 1966 and American Sculpture of the Sixties at the Los Angeles County Museum, 1967. Recently he has participated in major group shows at Moderna Museet, Stockholm in 2008, and Documenta 12 in Kassel, Germany. Beginning in November of this year, a major museum retrospective of the artist’s work will be featured at Castello di Rivoli, Turin. The artist is represented in New York by David Zwiner.
– G. Tedone
Related links:
Documenta 12, Kassel, 2007 [Documenta]
John McCracken: A Retrospective, Castello di Rivoli, Museo d’Arte Contemporanea, Turin, 2010 [Castello di Rivoli]
New Works in Bronze and Steel by John McCracken at David Zwirner [artdaily]
