For Nœuds et nus, pioneering American artist Lynda Benglis (b. 1941) returns to Brussels with a group of recent sculptures in paper and bronze.
Featuring a series of wall-mounted paper sculptures in ethereal nude tones and a large-scale, highly polished golden bronze, the exhibition shines a spotlight on the sensuous tactility at the crux of Benglis' practice. Although bronze and paper couldn't be more different, both materials share a similar capacity for physical transformation. Bronze becomes molten and paper softens under the influence of the primal elements of fire and water. This fleeting moment of mutability is what fascinates Benglis in her working process and lies at the heart of the exhibition.
To make her tubular and lightweight paper sculptures, the artist draped wet sheets of handmade paper over chicken wire armatures, which were also fashioned by hand. Their subtle flesh tones and minimal adornment can be interpreted as a reference to the human body, and more specifically, the representational form of the nude. Benglis explains, 'They are like skins basically–that is how I think of them. They describe the form and the skeletal structure that is always kind of in motion. Very mutable, it is kind of like clay, but the clay becomes paper. It dries so beautifully, and the wrinkles are all part of it, and the colour change is part of it, so it is like painting with physical paper. The gestures are in the drying, in the push and pull of the wire, plucking like a guitar.' Childhood memories of the natural world–landscape, trees and water in particular–play a crucial role within the artist's creative practice. A number of works refer to Benglis spending time on the Kastellorizo Island in Greece or birdwatching with her grandfather in Mississippi.
Benglis' sculptures reveal the processes behind their making–the shaping, modelling, pushing, and pulling that brings them to life–and this is no less true of her free-standing bronze work Power Tower. Here, Benglis returns to the knot, a form important to her since the 1970s and one she associates with expansion and growth. Her bronzes derive from earlier small, elemental,hand-formed clay works from her Elephant Necklace series. To describe Benglis' work in 1974, the critic Robert Pincus-Witten famously coined the term 'the frozen gesture,' a concept that merges material temporality with gestural freedom. The Elephant Necklace series is a key example of the frozen gesture's formal volatility, opposing the modernist impulse towards fixity. Once the forms are enlarged in bronze, they no longer seem frozen; their shining surface allowing for an even greater sense of movement. Benglis likens the knotted forms to the blown-out car tyres that litter the sides of motorways; the metal makes them faster and more changeable. In fact, the forms that Benglis chose to enlarge are the ones she considers the fastest of the Elephant Necklace series. The bronze knot becomes a convoluted mirror, reflecting and activating the environment around it.
The true subject of Benglis' evocative and highly expressive forms is the artist's synergetic engagement with her materials. Although both kinds of work are rooted in a similar process–the shaping of soft, organic substances, be it clay and paper, with hands and fingers–they each evoke different kinds of actions, movements and sensations. While Power Tower communicates power and motion, the paper sculptures exude a quiet stillness.
By demonstrating the plasticity and mutability of these materials and the processes through which they are shaped, Benglis makes the act of artistic creation itself visible.
Lynda Benglis (b.1941, Lake Charles, Louisiana, USA) lives and works in New York and Santa Fe, New Mexico. Her work is currently the subject of an eponymous exhibition at the National Gallery of Art, Washington D.C. (18 June 2021 to 2 January 2022). In May 2022, The Nasher Sculpture Center, Dallas, TX, will open a major exhibition focussed on the artist's recent work. Recent solo exhibitions include Lynda Benglis: In the Realm of the Senses, Museum of Cycladic Art, Athens (2019-2020); Lynda Benglis: Elephant Necklace, Ogden Museum of Southern Art, LA, New Orleans (2019-2020); Lynda Benglis: Bird's Nest, The Harwood Museum of Art, University of NewMexico, Taos, NM (2019).
Lynda Benglis (b. 1941, Lake Charles, Louisiana) is recognised for an oeuvre that has consistently challenged art-historical and technical conventions while treading new and experimental ground. Driven by an inventive and interrogative approach to both the physical and aesthetic properties of her chosen materials, she works in a broad range of media including beeswax, latex, polyurethane, glitter, luminous paint, plaster, metal, glass, porcelain and paper. With sculpture as a primary focus, Benglis creates pure, abstract works that are typically inspired by natural and organic forms. She often combines an element of visual seductiveness—reflective or sparkling surfaces, transparency, vivid hues—with atypical shapes, challenging the relationship between painting and sculpture and their respective modes of presentation. As a young artist in the mid-1960s, Benglis explored such issues by throwing brightly-coloured liquid latex onto the floor to create large ‘poured’ works that expanded the prevailing discourse around minimalism and the legacy of abstract expressionism. Working in photography and video primarily in the 1970s, Benglis created radical images that sought to undermine gender stereotypes and discrimination against women artists within male-dominated artistic circles. More recently, she has harnessed technology to arrest waves of polyurethane foam in mid-air, thereby transforming them into solid, three-dimensional objects and continuing her exploration of the ‘frozen gesture’.
Xavier Hufkens is one of Europe’s leading galleries for contemporary art. Located in Brussels, the gallery maintains a diverse exhibition programme with solo exhibitions of the gallery artists as well as group exhibitions and special projects. The gallery deals in a distinctive combination of painting, drawing, sculpture, photography, video and installation-based work.
The origins of the gallery date back to 1987, when Xavier Hufkens opened a gallery space in an un-refurbished warehouse in the neighbourhood of the South Station (Midi) in Brussels. During the early years, the focus of the gallery was upon mid-career and emerging artists and the gallery is known for having introduced some of the most influential contemporary artists to Brussels at a time when they were still relatively unknown. British sculptor Antony Gormley, who is still affiliated with the gallery, Felix Gonzalez-Torres and Rosemarie Trockel all showed in Belgium for the first time with Xavier Hufkens (Gormley in 1987; Gonzalez-Torres in 1991 and Trockel in 1993).
In 1992, the gallery moved to a 19th-century townhouse at 6 rue Saint-Georges, close to the Avenue Louise. Completely renovated by Belgian architects Paul Robbrecht, Hilde Daem and Marie-José Van Hee, the house quickly gained a reputation for being not just one of the most beautiful contemporary art spaces in the Belgian capital, but also one of the most interesting. The expanded exhibition programme coincided with the additional representation of a number of established artists from Belgium and abroad, including Richard Artschwager, Thierry De Cordier and Jan Vercruysse. In 1997, Hufkens expanded the gallery further by annexing the adjacent building and a number of new artists joined the gallery, including Louise Bourgeois, Roni Horn and Thomas Houseago.
A second space in the same street, at 107 rue Saint-Georges, opened in spring 2013. Located in the Galerie Rivoli, a mixed-use commercial development from the 1970s, the new gallery space was designed by Swiss architect Harry Gugger, who was previously in partnership with Herzog and De Meuron. Slegten & Toegemann, Brussels, managed the project. A third space opened in spring 2020, located at 44 Rue Van Eyck, designed by architect Bernard Dubois.
An eclectic but very clear vision underpins all of the gallery’s activities: 'The definition of the gallery was established from the start. The common thread, then and now, is quality over and above everything else, which I find more intellectually challenging than a forced definition. From the early days I juxtaposed established artists such as Michelangelo Pistoletto with someone like Felix Gonzalez-Torres when he was totally unknown. Today I still mix my work: I have no problem showing Malcolm Morley … alongside Robert Ryman, or Willem de Kooning.' [Xavier Hufkens in The Art Newspaper, Issue 220, January 2011, published online: 20 January 2011]
Xavier Hufkens represents some thirty artists from different generations. He was part of the six-member selection committee for Art Basel during seven years and also participates in up to five international Arts Fairs annually. The gallery has partnerships with the estates of Louise Bourgeois, Willem de Kooning, Robert Mapplethorpe and Alice Neel.
