LARRY BELL

Hauser & Wirth presents the artist Larry Bell. The exhibition focuses on Larry Bell’s architecturally scaled works from the 1970s, known as standing walls. The large scale works in this show are among his most ambitious early works and follow a rigorous, radical and austere economy of means.

June 4 - August 31, 2024

The exhibition consists of the four large-scale glass sculptures from the early 1970s, along with ‘Moving Ways,’ a monumental late 1970s wall work. These works highlight Bell’s historic contribution to a severely pared down aesthetic and how his work at this stage addresses not just the viewer’s gaze but the perceiving body, both characteristics that can be allied to minimalism.

To signal and compliment the exhibition, a more recent, highly coloured glass work will be installed outdoors in the Jardins des Boulingrins adjacent to the gallery during the course of the exhibition. The rare, museum-quality works that will be shown come primarily from important Italian collections, such as the Panza Collection.

Known foremost for his refined surface treatment of glass and explorations of light, reflection and shadow through the material, Bell’s understanding of the potential of glass and light allows him to expand visual and physical fields of perception, and his sculptures to surpass traditional bounds of the medium.

Since 1969, Larry Bell has used his own high-vacuum coating system that allows him to deposit thin metal films onto his glass surfaces, harnessing a little-known technique developed for aeronautics to create a highly original body of work.

The unique large-scale wall work ‘Moving Ways’ (1978), made from applying aluminum on black paper, comprises five individual drawings hung together to make up a multi-panelled composition. In the ‘vapor drawings,’ Bell controls the density of the metallic coating, much like his glass works, in order to vary degrees of transparency and opacity across their surface.

Outside in the Jardins des Boulingrins, the major sculpture ‘The Blue Gate’ (2021) will be shown. This much more recent work shows the development of Bell’s practice. This is most apparent though his masterful adoption of colour achieved by employing the very different medium of monochrome colour-laminated glass.