Larry Bell
Nesting Box True
Fog/Capri/Mist/Lagoon
2023
Laminated glass coated with chrome and silicone monoxide
30.5 x 30.5 x 30.5 cm / 12 x 12 x 12 in
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Through his deft handling of glass, Larry Bell has transgressed the conventional boundaries of contemporary sculpture by studying the elusive nature of translucent objects in space. ‘Nesting Box True Fog/Capri/Mist/Lagoon’ (2023) is a cubic sculpture that plays with the relationships between matter, perception, and form. Placed atop a solid white plinth, the glass panes shift in colour before the viewer’s eyes. By depositing thin films of metal on the surface of the glass, Bell achieves futuristic yet subtle tonal variations between each colour, allowing the box to appear quasi-immaterial—as though Bell has captured the sculpture’s physical volume in the process of dissolving.
In seeking to make the material and immaterial converge, Bell’s pioneering approach allows an inherently physical medium to become a weightless, optical composition of perceptual phenomena.
About the artist
Larry Bell is one of the most renowned and influential artists to emerge from the Los Angeles art scene of the 1960s, alongside contemporaries Ed Ruscha and Robert Irwin, garnering international repute by the age of 30. Known foremost for his refined surface treatment of glass and explorations of light, reflection and shadow, Bell’s significant oeuvre extends from painting and works on paper to glass sculptures and furniture design. Bell’s understanding of the potential of glass and light allows him to expand visual and physical fields of perception and enables his sculptures to surpass the traditional bounds of glass as a medium. He has said: ‘Although we tend to think of glass as a window, it is a solid liquid that has at once three distinctive qualities: it reflects light, it absorbs light, and it transmits light all at the same time.’
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Artwork images © Larry Bell. Photo: Damian Griffiths
Portrait, 2021 © Larry Bell. Photo: Jason Collin
