Dia is pleased to announce a new display of sculpture by Larry Bell opening at Dia Beacon on March 12, 2022. Since the early 1960s Bell has explored the interplay between light, color, and volume through the medium of glass. As a leading figure of Southern California’s Light and Space movement, Bell has used new materials and techniques to investigate how the perceptual experience of a sculpture in its environment unfolds for the spectator. 

“Seen in these naturally litgalleries designed by Bell’s friend and contemporary in Los Angeles, Robert Irwin, these sculptures offer insight into Bell’s unique and groundbreaking understanding of the potential of glass as a medium,” said Jessica Morgan, Dia’s Nathalie de Gunzburg Director. “We also see the arc of his practice, from some of his earliest works utilizing cutting-edge technology in the 1960s to his expansive exploration of color today.” 

Bell’s earliest sculptures were simple geometric objects placed flush to the edge of clear acrylic pedestals that gave them the appearance of floating in space. Made of translucent colored glass, these relatively small cubes’ surfaces were often marked with geometric or elliptical patterns that framed space and filtered light dynamically. As Bell experimented with increasing the size of these cubic volumes, his attention shifted to how color appears most concentrated along their edges and corners. In a step crucial to this development, in 1965 he purchased a vacuum coating chamber that allowed him to animate large glass surfaces with metallic particles. Standing Walls (1968), one of the artist’s first freestanding sculptures, isolates and magnifies the corner effect through its composition of large alternating panels of clear and gray glass placed at right angles to form a zigzagging structure that viewers can fully move around.   

This exhibition brings together a focused selection of key early sculptures alongside a work newly conceived for Dia Beacon,  Duo Nesting Boxes (2021). This diptych combines the open-form autonomy of Bell’s standing walls with the geometry of his signature cubes. Bell’s  Duo Nesting Boxes enfolds enlarged cubes within standing walls, creating a perceptually enveloping effect of richly saturated blues and greens, resulting from the physical layering of colors in space.  

“Over the course of his five-decade-long career, Larry Bell has continuously expanded upon the possibilities of glass as a medium. The works on view at Dia Beacon highlight his forays into the limits of perception, as the glass reflects and absorbs light, drawing in the viewer with richly saturated color,” said Alexis Lowry, curator.

Larry Bell is made possible by generous support from Hauser & Wirth and Graham Steele. Additional support provided by Anthony Meier and a Board Discretionary Grant of the Robert Rauschenberg Foundation. Special thanks to Kvadrat.

Larry Bell is organized by Alexis Lowry, curator, Dia Art Foundation.

Larry Bell is included in "Fragile! Alles aus Glas" at Kunsthalle Vogelmann, Heilbronn, Germany from 20 November 2021 - 20 March 2022.

Larry Bell is included in "Shady Beautiful" at Malin Gallery, New York, NY from 1 July – 1 September 2021.

Larry Bell is included in "The Paradox of Stillness: Art, Object, and Performance" at the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis from 15 May 2021 – 8 August 2021. 

Larry Bell and Zoe Leonard are included in "Artists for New York" at Hauser & Wirth, New York, NY from 6 October 2020 - 22 October 2020.
‘Artists for New York’ is a major initiative to raise funds in support of a group of pioneering non-profit visual arts organizations across New York City that have been profoundly impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic.

Larry Bell is included in a "Presentation of Gallery Artists" at Hauser and Wirth, Hong Kong form 8 - 30 May 2020. 

The exhibition, "Larry Bell: Still Standing," will be at Hauser & Wirth, New York from 20 February to 11 April 2020. 

One of the most renowned and influential artists to emerge from the Los Angeles art scene of the 1960s, Larry Bell is known foremost for his refined surface treatment of glass and his explorations of light, reflection, and shadow. His experimentations with commercial industrial processes with high-vacuum coating systems and his interests in the optical qualities of glass led him to make work that investigates multiple ways of using light as a material.

The exhibition of Larry Bell's work, "Cubic Propositions," will be on view at the Harwood Museum of Art, Taos, NM from 13 December 2019 to 27 September 2020. On the occasion of Larry Bell's eightieth birthday, the Harwood Museum presents a few examples of a prominent theme in his body of work: the cube. From the moment he entered the studio in 1959 and continuing through the present day, the cube has been a means to explore light, space and surface.

Larry Bell is included in the group exhibition "LA to Taos" at 203 Fine Art, Taos, NM from 21 September - 28 October 2019. The exhibition will be accompanied by a reception on 21 September from 5-8 pm. "LA to Taos" is an exhibition recognizing and honoring the achievements of four artists, Larry Bell, Ron Cooper, Ronald Davis and Ken Price, who have all made significant contributions to the evolving art colony of Taos. Between 1970 and 1990, each of the four artists made the unlikely move from Los Angeles to Taos, New Mexico, where they continued to live and work in the ensuing decades. Although their approaches to artmaking span various disciplines and methods, they share a penchant for rule-breaking and innovation.

Larry Bell will welcome visitors to his Venice Beach studio for an artist talk on Saturday, 17 August 2019 at 7 pm. Larry Bell's work reflects a lifelong investigation into the properties of light. His passion for playing with those properties with reverence and spontaneity belies and even defies the impressively technical nature of his practice. Given that his most popular works trade in optical illusion, this rare opportunity to speak with Bell at the place where the magic happens reveals the very analog, tactile, material experiments behind the quiet dazzle of the work.

Larry Bell will be included in "It's All Black & White" at the Frederick R. Weisman Museum at Pepperdine University from 27 August - 8 December 2019. A special opening reception will be held Sunday, September 15 from 4-6 p.m., and Foundation Director Billie Milam Weisman will host a walkthrough at 4 p.m. 

This exhibition focuses on how contemporary artists since 1970 have used black and white. The majority of the works are American, with a special focus on works from California. Included are seminal movements such as Pop Art, Process Art, Light and Space, New Figuration, Appropriation Art, Expressionism, and more. 

Larry Bell will be included in the exhibition "Twenty-Five Years" at Peter Blake Gallery, opening 30 June 2019. Peter Blake Gallery is pleased to commemorate its twenty-fifth year with an exhibition of the gallery’s historic West Coast Minimalism collection.

Larry Bell is included in the exhibtion 'Closer Look: Intimate Scale' at the Orange County Museum of Art. Co-curated with exhibiting artist Hiromi Takizawa and the Orange County Museum of Art, this exhibition provides a focused look at small sculpture in the OCMA permanent collection. Selected for their innovative materials, playfulness in scale and function, and historic importance within the context of significant art movements and artistic careers, each artwork in Closer Look is intended to be viewed at a close distance, providing the viewer with an intimate moment to make slow and careful observations

Larry Bell will be included in 'Glow Like That' at K11 Atelier. Light is not only a natural phenomenon but also a product of technological advancement. It is an empty signifier awaiting a narrative; it is undefined, fuzzy at the edges. Fluid and amorphous, light therefore has endless possibilities. When interacting with light, certain kinds of surfaces take on an iridescent sheen or reflect their surroundings, producing a shimmering or radiant ‘glow’. Presented by K11 Art Foundation as the first contemporary art exhibition held in Victoria Dockside, Glow Like That features 16 artists and collectives from countries including China, the US, and Japan, showcasing an impressive array of paintings, video works, sculptures, and installations. 

The Institute of Contemporary Art, Miami is pleased to present the solo exhibition, Larry: Bell Time Machines, on view from 1 November 2018 - 10 March 2019. Larry Bell: Time Machines is the first comprehensive American museum survey of the artist’s work in nearly two decades. The exhibition features major bodies of Bell’s work, from the his early Cube series to his large-scale color-glass installations.

At ICA Miami, Larry Bell: Time Machines focuses attention on Bell’s innovative explorations of experiences generated by architectural space, as well as his little-known engagement with audiovisual media, including video and photography.

One of the most significant artists of his generation, Larry Bell (b. 1939, Chicago) is an important representative of a West Coast minimalism that married matter-of-fact materials and forms with intense sensorial experiences. Bell is most commonly known for his Minimalist sculptures—transparent cubes that thrive on the interplay of shape, light, and environment—that champion the ideas of the Light and Space Movement of the 1960s. Although he had early success with Abstract Expressionist painting, a side job at a frame shop led him to experiment with excess scraps of glass, thus beginning his fascination with the material’s interaction with light. Bell’s first series of cubes combined three-dimensional glass forms with transmitted light, creating illusions of perspective through angles, ellipses, and mirrors. His later purchase of industrial plating equipment allowed him to create sculptures with metallic-coated glass and, eventually, drawings on Mylar-coated paper.

Larry Bell and Jim Melchert: Artists In Conversation
Moderated by Gay Outlaw

Tuesday 18 September | 6:30 pm

Timken Lecture Hall
California College of the Arts

Free and open to the public

Presented by Anthony Meier Fine Arts and California College of the Arts

In conjunction with
'Larry Bell: Bay Area Blues'
Anthony Meier Fine Arts
18 September - 19 October 2018
 

On the occasion of Complete Cubes, Hauser & Wirth's first exhibition devoted to Larry Bell in his hometown of Los Angeles, please join us for a discussion of the artist's work with Aram Moshayedi, curator at The Hammer Museum. 

With over 20 works ranging in size from 2 inches to 40 inches and spanning the early 1960s to today, this exhibition celebrates Bell's mastery of light, reflection, and volume through a groundbreaking approach to glass. Hauser & Wirth's presentation also features new large-scale glass sculptures created fo the exhibition.

This event is free, however, reservations are recommended.

Hayward Gallery is pleased to present the group exhibtion, Space Shifters, with works by Larry Bell. The exhibition will be on view from 16 September 2018 - 6 January 2019. A major thematic exhibition featuring artworks by over 20 international artists that alter or disrupt our sense of space and re-orient our understanding of our surroundings in ways that are by turns subtle and dramatic. Often constructed from reflective or translucent materials, including glass and resin, the artworks in Space Shifterselicit responses that are both physiological and psychological.

Featuring pioneering sculptures from the 1960s – often minimal in nature and concerned with light, volume and scale – this exhibition also includes large-scale installations, ambitious architectural interventions and a number of site-specific commissions that respond to the gallery’s brutalist architecture and provide a dramatic and fitting conclusion to Hayward Gallery’s 50th anniversary year.

The 57th Salon is pleased to present the group exhibition, The Marvellous Cacophony, with works by Larry Bell. The exhibition will be on view from 15 September - 28 October 2018. 

The Marvellous Cacophony is based on the idea of diversity. This concept puts the Serbian and the Belgrade art scenes into an international context, but at the same time, refers to the complex cultural and socio-political situation in the region. At the beginning of 21st century, despite the fact that the Western notion of contemporary art has become an universal model of reference, no single common denominator has emerged. The art world has many centres, multi-layered activities, a plurality of ideas about what art is and what it can be, and an impressive number of heterogeneous works. This Marvellous Cacophony reflects the richness of the world. It is a positive condition, creating energies that can include dissonance and even conflicting ideas and expressions. It involves the coexistence of multiple identities and permanent relational flows, conveying notions of miscellany and openness, and creating meaningful narratives about art and culture, social issues and politics. The Marvellous Cacophony will explore worldwide artistic production, looking into diverse art scenes and different generations of living artists. It will bring together a constellation of works that express, through their forms, structures, materials, techniques, devices and content, the extraordinary richness of contemporary artistic expression.

Larry Bell will be included in the exhibition "Alma Thomas: The Light of the Whole Universe" at Smith College Museum of Art from 27 July, 2018 - 1 December, 2019. New materials developed during World War II (1939–45) also transformed art in the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s. The invention of acrylic paint, a highly saturated, quick drying, plastic-based paint derived from Plexiglass and employed by Alma Thomas, Helen Frankenthaler, and Sam Gilliam, radically changed the way artists worked once it became commercially available in the 1950s.

The use of translucent plastics by Fred Eversley, Larry Bell, and Louise Nevelson in addition to experiments with the shape and finish of metals by Michelangelo Pistoletto, Donald Judd, and John Chamberlain show just some of the ways artists exploited the creative potential of these new materials.

Larry Bell is included in the exhibition "Alma Thomas: The Light of the Whole Universe" at Smith College Museum of Art New from 27 July 2018 - 31 December 2019.

New materials developed during World War II (1939–45) also transformed art in these decades. For example, Philadelphia’s Rohm and Haas (now The Dow Chemical Company) applied lessons gleaned from one of its wartime acrylic products—Plexiglass—to develop acrylic paint. The invention of this highly saturated, quick drying, plastic-based paint, employed by Alma Thomas, Helen Frankenthaler, and Sam Gilliam, radically changed the way artists worked once it became commercially available in the 1950s.

The use of translucent plastics by Fred Eversley, Larry Bell, and Louise Nevelson in addition to experiments with the shape and finish of metals by Michelangelo Pistoletto, Donald Judd, and John Chamberlain show just some of the ways artists exploited the creative potential of these new materials.

Hauser & Wirth Los Angeles is pleased to present Larry Bell. Complete Cubes, the gallery’s first solo exhibition for the internationally acclaimed American artist in his hometown. The exhibition will be on view from 23 June - 23 September 2018. Larry Bell’s innovative approach to sculpture and perceptual phenomena has placed him uniquely at the hub of both Southern California’s Light & Space movement and New York Minimalism in the sixties, which continues to inform his practice today as a forerunner of California Minimalism. This landmark exhibition offers viewers insight into Bell’s lifelong dedication to the glass cube through a groundbreaking body of work that has become inextricably linked to the emergence of Los Angeles as an internationally significant center of artistic innovation.

Complete Cubes is the first exhibition to organize Bell’s iconic glass cubes by scale, showcasing an example of every size the artist has produced from the early 1960s to the present. Featuring rarely seen works that are among the most important of Bell’s early career, the exhibition comprises over 20 sculptures ranging in size from 2 inches to 40 inches, as well as new large-scale works created specifically for this presentation, which extend new formal explorations seen in his recent 2017 Whitney Biennial installation ‘Pacific Red II.’

Complete Cubes introduces visitors to Bell’s early experiments with scale and materials while illustrating his long engagement with the glass cube. The first seven works on a Plexiglas pedestal custom-designed by Bell demonstrate the variety of methods, materials, and surface treatments that the artist has employed while working with glass cubes from the early 60s through the 2000s.

The Harwood Museum of Art is pleased to present the solo exhibition, Larry Bell: Hocus, Focus and 12, on view from 9 June - 7 October 2018. The exhibition is guest-curated by noted photographer Gus Foster, a longtime friend and collaborator of the artist – they have shared adjoining studios in Taos since 1976. Foster and Bell have selected work from Bell’s Taos studio and from the seventy-four works by the artist in the Harwood Collection.

Larry Bell is one of the most noteworthy representatives of abstract art in the postwar period. His career has spanned nearly six decades and has given him an audience in all the major art centers of the world. Bell’s medium, “light on surface,” has often utilized the technology of thin film deposition of vaporized metals and minerals on glass surfaces. His work has evolved in a number of directions, beginning with constructions, glass boxes and standing wall glass panel sculptures. Other bodies of work include Vapor Drawings, Mirage works (collages) on paper and canvas, Furniture de Lux, Sumer (a series of calligraphic bronze figures up to 30 feet in height), and Fractions, a series of 12,000 small 10 x 10-inch collage works on paper.

 

Bell exhibits extensively in museums and galleries internationally and in the U.S. and has been awarded numerous public art commissions. He was born in Chicago in 1939 and grew up in the San Fernando Valley of California. He briefly attended Chouinard Art Institute in Los Angeles where he met other students and teachers who would become lifelong friends and fellow artists. He moved to Taos, New Mexico in 1973 and currently maintains studios in both Taos and Venice, California.

The Aspen Art Museum is pleased to present the solo exhibtion, Larry Bell: Aspen Blues, on view from 1 June - 16 December 2018. For his AAM presentation, Bell will install a new sculptural diptych, Aspen Blues (2018), in the AAM’s Roof Deck Sculpture Garden.

Emerging in the mid-1960s during the rise of Minimalism, Larry Bell is a pioneer of Perceptualism and has long been associated with the West Coast Light and Space artists. In 1966, Bell’s work was presented in Primary Structures, the first exhibition to focus on Minimal art and organized by the Jewish Museum in New York. Central to his practice is optical sensation as well as a masterly exploitation of human perception—offering viewers playful, complex experiences that question the limits of their vision. Dedicated to using light as a medium, Bell creates elusive, seductive objects that rely on light in order to “perform.”

His widely acclaimed glass cubes—initially relatively small and exhibited on pedestals—both reflect and absorb light to create sensuous, interwoven experiences of mirroring and transparency. Art historian Jack Burnham has described these works as “constructions which nearly dissolve into invisibility in the feat of optical titillation.” The artist’s move to Taos in the mid-1970s sparked his interest in public art, and he began to conceive more expansive and sizeable work. Over the decades, his classic boxes have become larger, more complex, and enhanced in their saturation of color and intensity.