Lehmann Maupin presents an exhibition of works by Helen Pashgian, opening in the gallery’s seasonal Palm Beach location on December 15. The season marks the gallery’s third consecutive year of programming in Palm Beach, which will feature a series of solo exhibitions running through mid-November through May 2023.
An early pioneer of the Light and Space movement, Pashgian has produced numerous sculptural series composed of vibrantly colored columns, discs, and spheres that often feature an isolated element that appears suspended, embedded, or encased within the larger sculpture. Using an innovative application of industrial epoxies, plastics, and resins, Pashgian’s works are characterized by their semi-translucent surfaces that appear to both filter and contain light. Pashgian understands each of her works as a “presence” in space which does not reveal everything at once; one must move around her sculptures to observe changes, evoking a phenomenon of constant movement. Each sculpture, along with the objects suggested within, seems to come and go, appear and disappear, approach and recede.
This exhibition will feature a series of spheres, expanding on one of the bodies of work for which Pashgian is best known. Each brightly colored sphere contains a suspended element. As light enters each sculpture, distortions, illusions, refractions, and rainbows occur as a result of the interplay between the light, reflective surfaces, and the cast forms inside. Two of Pashgian’s mounted sculptures appear to float in front of the wall; like the artists’ spheres, these works house an interior object-element. Their dark, matte materials and elliptically curved edges foster a relational effect, wherein the viewer’s visual perception and physical movement in space completes the sculptures. These wall works were the impetus for Pashgian’s columns, which stand freely in the gallery. Vastly different in shape and constructed to reference embodied and architectural forms, these works are nonetheless similar in behavior to Pashgian’s spheres and wall sculptures – they each feature an isolated element that seemingly hovers or floats within the larger structure. The semi-translucent, dark matter surface of the column appears to simultaneously filter and emit light, inviting viewers into optical and spatial interaction.