Larry Bell Biography

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.

Education

Bell studied at the Chouinard Art Institute (now a part of the California Institute of the Arts) between 1957 and 1959.

Painting Collages

Beginning 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.

Materials

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.

Exhibitions

Larry Bell has held numerous solo and group exhibitions. Selected solo exhibitions include Still Standing, Hauser & Wirth, New York (2020); Cubic Propositions, Harwood Museum of Art, Taos, New Mexico (2020); Time Machines, ICA Miami, Florida (2019); Aspen Blues, Aspen Art Museum (2018); Larry Bell: Cubes, Mirage Works, Fractions, Anne Mosseri-Marlio Galerie, Basel (2016).

Ocula | 2021