Lehmann Maupin presents a group of new sculptures by Anya Gallaccio at the gallery’s 201 Chrystie Street location from January 9 through February 15, 2015. The artist will be present at an opening reception on Friday, January 9 from 6-8pm.
Known for her work with organic materials, including flowers, fruit, salt, chocolate, sugar, dirt, and most recently stone, Gallaccio explores the qualities inherent to her chosen materials. Subjected to natural processes of transformation, her works have a temporal quality, revealing instability, fragility or change over time.
For her third Lehmann Maupin show, Gallaccio presents new sculptures that draw upon the formal language of Minimalism including floor works that are variations on a cube. Composed of various species of stone from the western United States, including limestone, sandstone, and granite, these works demonstrate Gallaccio’s ongoing exploration of the states of natural materials. Gallaccio both confronts and subverts the authority of Minimalist forms with the use of organic materials, which by their very nature will not conform to the idealized structures and systems she references. Though viewers may not readily associate stone with the transient qualities of Gallaccio’s earlier works, the materials used in these sculptures have been formed slowly by geological forces over millennia. The history and context of the landscape from which they came and the passage of time that shaped them are embedded in the materials, made visible by each stone's unique coloration, patterns, and texture. In the artist’s view, these works and their materials, through subtle variation and surface qualities, convey a sense of the landscapes from which they originated.
The exhibition also includes a group of three wall sculptures made from obsidian, a naturally occurring volcanic glass formed from cooled lava. Polished to create a reflective surface, the works mirror their surroundings as well as the viewer standing before them, exploring ideas of perception. Along with the floor pieces, these works investigate the formal properties of sculpture, including mass, volume, and the relationship between the object and its surrounding space.