LARRY BELL
Born in 1939, Chicago (USA) Lives in Taos (New Mexico, USA)
12" Cube, 1985
Glass and metal, plexiglass.
Colección Fonds National d'Art Contemporain. Ministère de la Culture et de la Communication, París. Nº Inv. 02-1104.
Since the 1960s the sculptor Larry Bell has predominantly worked with cubiform glass structures, experimenting with different measures and reflective effects. Far from searching for an absolute objectivity and a formal purity of the material, as some of his minimalist colleagues have sought to do, Bell's art consists of structurally modifying glass to strengthen its capacity for reflection. To achieve this he employs complex techniques to create illusory effects verging on the hallucinogenic. The formal elegance, combined with the geometric rigour and the sensibility of the sensations (iridescent colourations, blended filtration of light), plays with the changing position of the spectator in relation to the object. Larry Bell feels attracted by modern architecture and its manipulation of glass as a building material, but above all he insists on the contemplative aspect of a material that celebrates contradictory qualities; alternatively transparent, opaque or reflective, neutral and fascinating, ultimately letting one see everything through modified perceptions.
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