Helen Pashgian @ Lehmann Maupin, NYC - Spheres and Lenses

Helen Pashgian: Spheres and Lenses 

Lehmann Maupin, New York 

November 4, 2021 – January 8, 2022 

Lehmann Maupin presents Spheres and Lenses, artist HELEN PASHGIAN’s first solo exhibition in New York since 1971 and her first with Lehmann Maupin in the United States. This exhibition features a series of new lens and sphere sculptures, expanding on the bodies of work for which she is best known. Born in Pasadena, Helen Pashgian is widely recognized as a pioneer and leading member of the 1960s Light and Space movement in Southern California, which explored Minimalism with a close eye toward the interaction between light and space. Over the course of her career, Helen Pashgian has produced an extensive oeuvre of innovative sculptures―vibrantly colored columns, discs, and spheres―that engage light, color, and form in wholly unique ways. Often featuring an isolated minimal shape that appears suspended, embedded, or encased within, these works are characterized by their semi-translucent surfaces that somehow both redirect and contain illumination. In Spheres and Lenses, Helen Pashgian focuses on two bodies of work—spheres and lenses—carefully experimenting with scale, from the intimate (6 inch spheres) to the immense (60 inch lens). 

Using an innovative application of industrial epoxies, plastics, and resins to create her ethereal surfaces, Helen Pashgian refers to her sculptures as “presences” in space that viewers must circumnavigate to fully experience. Every vantage point invites an observation of change—of color and light shifting, internal objects appearing and receding—a phenomenon of visual curiosity and pleasure. During the 1960s Helen Pashgian created her first sphere-like sculptures that inspired her career-long investigation of how light changes as it passes through a translucent object. Since these early egg-shaped epoxy resin experiments, Helen Pashgian has created an expansive series of brightly colored monochrome and multicolored spheres that contain a suspended element. These embedded “objects” challenge our understanding and assumptions around perception, causing the brain to question what the eye is seeing. As light enters each sculpture, distortions, illusions, refractions, and rainbows occur—a result of the interplay between the light, reflective surfaces, and cast forms inside. Helen Pashgian’s carefully researched choice of color plays a critical role in these effects, as each color reflects and refracts light in dramatically different ways. 

Trained as an art historian with a focus on Dutch Golden Age painting, Helen Pashigan was inspired by the many landscapes that depict a cool natural light similar to that of Southern California and the calm and composed interiors of Johannes Vermeer, who masterfully rendered light that appeared to emanate from a single source. These paintings continue to inform Helen Pashgian’s fundamental interest in making objects that engage with and expand our understanding of the effects and perception of light. During the late 1960s and early 1970s Helen Pashgian created a series of circular, disc-like works that she refers to as lenses. These works, both technically and aesthetically challenging, appear as discs of color floating in space, creating the illusion that the sculpture is both floating in front of and simultaneously receding into the wall behind it—an effect similar to watching the sunset on the horizon. The works in this series, which appear to hover just between materiality and immateriality, becoming and dissolving, most clearly illustrate Helen Pashgian's ability to engage light as a material that alters, changes, and seemingly dematerializes an object. Helen Pashgian began to revisit this series in 2010s, and is now pushing the scale and visual immateriality of these works to their limit, creating seductive optical effects that transfix the viewer. For this exhibition she has created a colossal lens that reaches 60 inches in diameter, the first presentation of a disc of this size in New York since the initial inception of the series in the 1960s. 

While Helen Pashgian has long gravitated towards experimenting with non-traditional materials, her primary concern has always been to maintain light as the object and subject of her work. In her most recent work, she draws viewers in by creating a range of ethereal, visual experiences through her unique ability to manipulate scale, color, materiality, and light. For Helen Pashgian, light is not simply a metaphor, symbol, or allegory; light itself is both the medium and the message. In addition to her presentation at Lehmann Maupin New York, Helen Pashigan have a major solo exhibition at SITE Santa Fe, NM, and is featured in a major survey exhibition of Light and Space opening at Copenhagen Contemporary, both opening in November 2021. Coinciding with this exhibition, the artist published Helen Pashgian: Spheres and Lenses with Radius Books in Spring/Summer 2021, with a major monograph forthcoming in 2022. 

HELEN PASHGIAN received her BA from Pomona College, Claremont, CA in 1956 and an MA from Boston University, Boston, MA in 1958. She also attended Columbia University, New York, NY from 1956 to 1957. Solo exhibitions of her work have been organized at Lehmann Maupin, New York, NY (2020, forthcoming); Lehmann Maupin, Seoul, and Hong Kong (2019); Vito Schnabel Projects, St. Moritz, Switzerland (2019); Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles (2014); Pomona College Museum of Art, Claremont, CA (2010); and Palm Springs Art Museum, Palm Springs, CA (2007). Select group exhibitions featuring her work include Crystals in Art: Ancient to Today, Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, Bentonville, AK (2019); Radiant Light and Expanded Space, Pearl Lam, Hong Kong, China (2019); Space Shifters, Hayward Gallery, London, UK (2018); Water & Light, Ochi Gallery and Emily Friedman Fine Art, Ketchum, ID (2018); Made in California, Mana Wynwood, Miami, FL (2015); California Dreamin’: Thirty Years of Collecting, Palm Springs Art Museum, Palm Springs, CA (2014); Beyond Brancusi: The Space of Sculpture, Norton Simon Museum, Pasadena, CA (2013); Pacific Standard Time: Crosscurrents in L.A. Painting and Sculpture, 1950-1970, J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles (2011), travelled to Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego, CA (2011) and MartinGropiusBau, Berlin, Germany (2012); Translucence: Southern California Art From the 1960s and 1970s, Norton Simon Museum, Pasadena, CA (2006); and The Senses: Selections from the Permanent Collection, Pomona College Museum of Art, Claremont, CA (2006).

Her work can be found in numerous public and private collections internationally, including the Andrew Dickson White Museum, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY; Bank of America, Los Angeles, CA; Bank of America, Singapore; Frederick Weisman Collection, Los Angeles, CA; Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles, CA; Museum of Contemporary Art, San Diego, CA; Norton Simon Museum, Pasadena, CA; Palm Springs Art Museum, Palm Springs, CA; Pomona College Museum of Art, Claremont, CA; Portland Art Museum, Portland, OR; and Santa Barbara Museum of Art, Santa Barbara, CA.

LEHMANN MAUPIN

501 West 24th Street, New York, NY 10011

www.lehmannmaupin.com

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Helen Pashgian: Columns and Wall Sculptures at Ace Gallery Beverly Hills CA

Helen Pashgian: Columns & Wall Sculptures 

Ace Gallery Beverly Hills CA

Through January 2012

Helen Pashgian

Columns & Wall Sculptures, 2011 - Installation View 

Photo Courtesy Ace Gallery Beverly Hills 

While meticulously constructed, the artwork of HELEN PASHGIAN shows no trace of the artist’s hand at work; instead, it concentrates on the final impression creating a tension between visual and cognitive perception. The artist’s intimate, small in scale works are enigmatic studies of light and color. Her larger pieces seem to defy their own creation in their intricate and minimal molding as elliptical volumes of light. A slow read is encouraged from the viewer, as one gains partial visual access without finding the origin of the image. While using light and color as exploratory materials, Helen Pashgian has created ethereal works from  industrial materials for her exhibition at Ace Gallery Beverly Hills. As stated by James Turrell:

“Helen Pashgian is a pioneer of the Los Angeles ‘Light and Space’ movement… [She] had the ironic stance of working in such a light drenched arena while maintaining the position of being an underground artist… [Her] efforts are now known.” —James Turell, Foreword. Helen Pashgian: Working in Light, Claremont, CA, Pomona College Museum of Art, 2010. 

Helen Pashgian, amid other artists working in Los Angeles in the late sixties such as James Turrell, Robert Irwin, Mary Corse, DeWain Valentine, Doug Wheeler, Larry Bell, and Peter Alexander, has investigated the properties of light in solid form for close to fifty years. Though Pashgian’s work may vary greatly in scale, regardless of size, her sculptures remain pristine and mysterious.

Helen Pashgian has recently created a series of eight-foot tall freestanding columns that take the form of vertical double-ellipses. Every column acts as conjoined twins, which elliptically fall in and out of each other. There is no end nor beginning, rather an envelopment of space and all that inhabit it. By making these sculptures large-scale, Pashgian has created a multitude of angles with which to play with light. The columns at times are just pure, self-supporting, luminescent color, in others Helen Pashgian has placed varying elements into the columns that change as viewers engage them from different approaches. The elements inside, whether they are a flat bar, metallic cylinder, or untraceable color, might appear to be an armature, but as each differs, no solid conclusions can be drawn. Mysterious as the construction is, Helen Pashgian has created tactile color with inner light sources emanating from the sculptures. 

Similar to her columns, some of the wall pieces have varying elements contained within; however, unlike her columns, Pashgian’s wall works appear to float. It isn’t immediately apparent how they are affixed to the wall. The enclosed elements not only appear to be shadows, but also cast shadows from within the pieces. As Kathleen Stuart Howe put it: 

“These interior elements at one moment capture a burst of light, then, as one moves around the sculptures, become solid forms that seem to push against the diaphanous surface… only to subside and dissolve into a ghostly presence.” —Kathleen Stewart Howe, Helen Pashgian: Working in Light, op. cit.

In contrast to her larger works, Pashgian’s small, twelve-inch squares are filled with intriguing contradictions: each conveys a sense of movement despite being fixed, each is small in size yet implies scale, each is predominately black yet colors come forth, and each is flat yet sculptural in nature. She takes what could be from a viewfinder, and frames it with a square, making for an intimate dynamic experience. There is a strong sense of movement within these smaller works –  a blurring effect, trails of light following larger sources – but at the same time there is an uncanny stillness, as if she has trapped light in a frame. Light may be as old as time, yet Helen Pashgian has found a way to reinvent how we look at it, taking a relatively small space and rendering it vast and expansive. In slight relief, she has layered her boxes, condensing luminance and giving the impression of threedimensions. Even though focused lighting may enhance the pieces, she has found a way to make colors glow in a natural light. 

Helen Pashgian does not reveal how her works come to fruition; instead, she leaves the viewer with what is there. Be they matte or so shiny that they glow, there is an obsession with texture and craft so meticulous that it is apparent that the artist has planned every vantage point. 

Born in 1934, Helen Pashgian currently lives and works in Pasadena, CA. She is currently included in the following exhibitions: The Getty Center, Pacific Standard Time: Crosscurrents in L.A. Painting and Sculpture, 1950-1970, and the related Pacific Standard Time exhibition at The Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego,  Phenomenal: California Light, Space, Surface.

Ace Gallery Beverly Hills' Release

1960s Los Angeles ground-breaking art pratices – About the exhibition Primery Atmospheres at David Zwirner Gallery, NYC

Primary Atmospheres
Works from California 1960-1970
David Zwirner Gallery, New York
January 8 - February 6, 2010
 

DOUG WHEELER 

Untitled, 1969 

Acrylic, neon tubing, and wood. 91 1/2 x 91 1/2 x 7 1/2 inches. 

Courtesy David Zwirner Gallery, New York. 

About this work see the text at the end of the post.

Primary Atmospheres: Works from California 1960-1970 will present to the New York public a long-overdue survey of the particular kind of minimal work that was made in and around Los Angeles, work which differentiated itself in its emphasis on surface, synthetic materials, industrial processes, and perception. Often referred to under the umbrella term “Light and Space,” the artists and artwork included in this exhibition will present a more inclusive overview of the ground-breaking and diverse art practices that flourished in California in the 1960s. The exhibition includes rarely seen works by Peter Alexander, Larry Bell, Laddie John Dill, Robert Irwin, Craig Kauffman, John McCracken, Helen Pashgian, James Turrell, De Wain Valentine, and Doug Wheeler.

While most of the artworks included in the exhibition can be referred to as minimal in form, their seductive surfaces, often made out of nontraditional materials, and their luminescent use of color and light characterize them as uniquely Southern Californian. Distinguishing themselves from their East Coast Minimalist counterparts, the California artists in the exhibition were reacting to local concerns with light and atmosphere, often evoking the qualities of the bright Los Angeles sunlight and the shiny, finished surfaces of the city’s ubiquitous signs and automobiles. Noted for translucent, reflective, or ethereal surfaces, the work made by these artists explored the often ephemeral boundaries between painting and sculpture and the broader experiential possibilities of art. 

The works on view capture some of the more specific aesthetic qualities of the Los Angeles area during the 1960s, where certain cutting-edge industrial materials and technologies were being developed at that time. Many of the artists employed unconventional materials to create complex, highly-finished and meticulous objects that have become associated with the so-called “Finish Fetish” aesthetic. These artists were also influenced by the industrial paints applied to the surfaces of surfboards and cars, as well as the plastics of the aerospace industry. 
Artists such as De Wain Valentine, Helen Pashgian, and Peter Alexander experimented with casting polyester resin in different formats, creating works which explore the material’s ability to both contain and reflect light. PETER ALEXANDER’s Untitled (Window), 1968, which consists of a transparent blue wedge, explores the synthetic material’s qualities in relationship to color and luminosity, whereas HELEN PASHGIAN’s clear, geometric orbs (such as Untitled, 1968-69) deal with shifts in perspective and issues of translucency and perception. DE WAIN VALENTINE’s Triple Disk Red Metal Flake - Black Edge, 1966, uses fiberglass reinforced polyester to achieve beautiful tensions between exterior and interior spaces.

In a similar manner, the early “cubes” of LARRY BELL explore the relationship between the sculptural object and its surrounding environment. Creating perfect cubes made out of glass and metal (among them Untitled, 1966-67, and Untitled, 1969), Bell developed a delicate, vacuum-coating technique to achieve semi-reflective exteriors. The flawless surfaces of these works induce a mesmerizing range of perceptual experiences, simultaneously drawing the viewer inside the object and reflecting the surrounding environment.

LADDIE JOHN DILLL’s Untitled, 1969, employs glass in a distinct manner: supported by sand and illuminated from below by argon light, its twelve glass panels create a reflective installation of fractured space that exponentially extends the sequence of glass panels in a mirrored progression. This work explores the interplay of site, structure, light, and, in effect, immateriality, while also addressing the viewer. Originally conceived in 1969, the artist has subsequently installed distinct, unique versions of this work in a site-specific manner: always using local materials, Dill configures the panes of glass according to the space in which it is installed. 

The relationship between color and surface was a primary concern for many of the artists in this exhibition. Among them, Craig Kauffman and John McCracken utilize color as a physical presence or “material.” 

CRAIG KAUFFMAN implemented plastic as his primary medium, creating his best known work: a series of vacuum-formed, Plexiglas wall reliefs that investigate the material aspects of color. These glossy and symmetrical works utilized a vacuum-formed molding technique developed for commercial signage. His transparent, plastic “bubbles” were then painted from behind, achieving a luminous effect through the integration of color and ambient light, to create works which cannot be classified as either painting or sculpture.

The highly-saturated, monochromatic surfaces of JOHN McCRACKEN’s works are sanded and polished to produce such a high degree of reflectiveness that they simultaneously activate their surroundings and appear translucent. Thus, the objects gain a singular and almost otherworldly quality, appearing at once physical and immaterial through his application of color. His signature form, referred to as a “plank” (the exhibition includes Red Plank, 1967, and Think Pink, 1967), leans at an angle against the wall (the site of painting) while simultaneously entering into the three-dimensional realm and physical space of the viewer. McCracken’s work further challenged the notions of Minimalism through the artist’s interest in spiritual phenomena. 

Robert Irwin, James Turrell, and Doug Wheeler, all of whom began as abstract painters, developed practices which employ light and indeterminate space to extend and disorient the visual experience. These artists created environmental installations which explore the physical, sensory, and temporal aspects of the architectural space.

ROBERT IRWIN began his practice by dismantling the act of painting in order to expose the perceivable qualities of color and space. The “dot painting” Untitled, 1963-65 (on loan from the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York), made up of small dots of color that interact with the viewer’s eyes, is an example of Irwin’s early interests in perception and its mechanisms. The exhibition will also include an example of Irwin’s free-standing, transparent acrylic columns (Untitled, 1970-71), in addition to an untitled work from 1969 (on loan from the Museum of Contemporary Art, San Diego) that is comprised of a white, convex disc mounted on the wall and lit from four points, casting numerous shadows to effectually dematerialize the object.

JAMES TURRELL’s work employs light as a medium. He creates what appear to be luminous three-dimensional forms which, upon closer inspection, resolve themselves into empty planes of light. Using colored light to cast geometric forms onto the corner of a room, these emanating projections explore the boundaries of the material and immaterial qualities of light to achieve perceivable visual forms that are distinct from the physical architectural space. The exhibition presents two such “corner projections” from the late 1960s.

DOUG WHEELER’s Untitled, 1969, belongs to a body of innovative light paintings known as his "Light Encasement" series (begun in 1965). These works consist of large squares of plastic, with neon lights embedded along their inside edges that blur the distinction between the work of art and its surrounding context. Generally hung on a wall in a pristine white room of precise proportions, these works create an immersive environment, absorbing the viewer in the subtle construction of pure space. Like Irwin and Turrell, Wheeler’s enveloping environments explore the materiality of light while also emphasizing the viewer's physical experience of space.

An illustrated catalogue with an essay by noted critic DAVE HICKEY will be published on the occasion of the exhibition in collaboration with Steidl, Germany. 

Peter Alexander, Larry Bell, Laddie John Dill, Robert Irwin, Craig Kauffman, John McCracken, Helen Pashgian, James Turrell, De Wain Valentine, and Doug Wheeler