Larry Bell is an American sculptor and painter whose impressive body of work can be viewed across a single developmental arc of improvisation, experimentation and impulse. In an interview with Ocula, the artist said: 'I consider my work to be evidence of my studies and the externalisation of a current thought. It is also about intuition, improvisation and spontaneity; these elements all impact the final result.’ Bell's work also explores the relationship between light and surface, and also space, context and the viewer. This is especially apparent in his well-known glass cube series, which play with perspective, space and surface.
Read MoreBeginning as an artist much aware of Abstract Expressionism, Bell began to incorporate simple geometric forms and pieces of glass and mirrors into his paintings, making spatially complex collages that created a certain dimensional dissonance. This experimentation with surfaces eventually allowed him to fully explore the possibility-rich relationship between light and the surfaces it touches. His glass cubes began with having thin film added to their glass panels by means of vacuum deposition, portraying different ways of light interacting with glass. These cubes play with the notion of space, and also mass and volume, giving the impression that the works are suspended in the air. Bell continued to push the boundaries of his materials, commissioning a device that coated surfaces more effectively, allowing for glass to be reflective, transmitting and absorbing of light all at once. He applied this technique to large glass sheets that were at once reflective and transparent that could both reveal and deceive, and be rearranged into multiple variations, such as in his 1974 work The Iceberg and It’s Shadow, made up of 56 large panels.
Bell has also incorporated these thin film deposition techniques onto other media such as on paper for his Vapour Drawings. His Light Knot series involve twisted, almost weightless forms of mylar film coated in thin metallic film hung from the ceiling, and moved and spun by even the slightest air movement.
Bell studied at the Chouinard Art Institute (now a part of the California Institute of the Arts) and he has participated in numerous institutional exhibitions, including the 1965 exhibition The Responsive Eye at the Museum of Modern Art in New York; as well as in exhibitions at the Guggenheim International, 1967; documenta 4 in 1968; and the Venice Biennale in 1976. He has enjoyed numerous solo exhibitions, including at the Pasadena Art Museum, 1972; Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, 1986; and Carré d’Art Musée d’art Contemporain de Nîmes, France, 2011. Bell also has his works in permanent collections such as the Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris; the Art Institute, Chicago; Denver Art Museum, Denver; Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, Texas; and the Museum of Modern Art, New York.
Larry Bell lives and works between Taos, New Mexico and Los Angeles, California.
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Ocula Insight Larry Bell talks spontaneous improvisation By Anna Dickie and Stephanie Bailey In 2016, artist Larry Bell gave a talk in the Swire Properties Lounge at Art Basel in Hong Kong, where he described his work as a 'spontaneous improvisation'. It is a surprising description when thinking about the work he is best known for: slick glass cube works including Pacific Red (2016), which comprises three large-scale reflective glass...
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Related Video & Audio Larry Bell. Complete Cubes, Hauser & Wirth Los Angeles 22 June 2018, Hauser & Wirth 
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