ARTISTS
Carol Bove: The Machine Age
Gagosian is pleased to announce the opening of The Machine Age, an exhibition of new sculptures by Carol Bove. This is the artist’s first exhibition at the gallery in Gstaad and her second with Gagosian, following her debut, Hardware Romance, at Park & 75, New York, in 2023.
Since the early 2000s, Bove—who was born close to Gstaad, in Geneva—has focused on the interdependence of artworks and their contexts. A poetic use of artifacts and materials ranging from found objects to industrial hardware, along with an acute awareness of architectural sites and modes of display, continues to steer her practice. Embracing the strategies of modernist formalism as a point of departure, Bove’s recent metal sculptures explore previously overlooked openings in the conventional narrative of art history, their appropriated titles adding further layers of reference.
The Machine Age features a group of abstract sculptures that juxtapose contorted tubes of steel with highly reflective, perfectly finished closed cylinders made from the same material. The tubes’ matte urethane paint finish lends their forms a deceptive impression of malleability and lightness, while their punctuation by squat, glossy “polka dot” cylinders hints at disparate styles including Art Deco, Memphis, and Minimalism. The works’ irregular forms and tempered surfaces also contribute to a subtly anthropomorphic quality, suggesting single reclining figures, or perhaps the erotic union of pairs. The exhibition design makes playful use of the gallery’s two different elevations to facilitate a range of possible sight lines.
While revealing the influence of such artists as John Chamberlain, John McCracken, and David Smith, Bove’s new works also resonate with the neglected tradition of “plaza art,” a cheekily named subvariant of mid-century abstract sculpture produced from industrial materials that was rejected by most critics in favor of Minimalism, but which retains an indelible public presence. While each sculpture in The Machine Age is crafted from one type of metal—steel—its components’ divergent surface treatments lend these individual elements distinct characters. This variance prompts viewers to question their assumptions about the ‘inherent’ qualities of familiar substances, and perhaps to rehabilitate the value of plaza art’s bias toward individual subjectivity.
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Gagosian is pleased to announce the opening of The Machine Age, an exhibition of new sculptures by Carol Bove. This is the artist’s first exhibition at the gallery in Gstaad and her second with Gagosian, following her debut, Hardware Romance, at Park & 75, New York, in 2023.
Since the early 2000s, Bove—who was born close to Gstaad, in Geneva—has focused on the interdependence of artworks and their contexts. A poetic use of artifacts and materials ranging from found objects to industrial hardware, along with an acute awareness of architectural sites and modes of display, continues to steer her practice. Embracing the strategies of modernist formalism as a point of departure, Bove’s recent metal sculptures explore previously overlooked openings in the conventional narrative of art history, their appropriated titles adding further layers of reference.
The Machine Age features a group of abstract sculptures that juxtapose contorted tubes of steel with highly reflective, perfectly finished closed cylinders made from the same material. The tubes’ matte urethane paint finish lends their forms a deceptive impression of malleability and lightness, while their punctuation by squat, glossy “polka dot” cylinders hints at disparate styles including Art Deco, Memphis, and Minimalism. The works’ irregular forms and tempered surfaces also contribute to a subtly anthropomorphic quality, suggesting single reclining figures, or perhaps the erotic union of pairs. The exhibition design makes playful use of the gallery’s two different elevations to facilitate a range of possible sight lines.
While revealing the influence of such artists as John Chamberlain, John McCracken, and David Smith, Bove’s new works also resonate with the neglected tradition of “plaza art,” a cheekily named subvariant of mid-century abstract sculpture produced from industrial materials that was rejected by most critics in favor of Minimalism, but which retains an indelible public presence. While each sculpture in The Machine Age is crafted from one type of metal—steel—its components’ divergent surface treatments lend these individual elements distinct characters. This variance prompts viewers to question their assumptions about the ‘inherent’ qualities of familiar substances, and perhaps to rehabilitate the value of plaza art’s bias toward individual subjectivity.
Artists on show
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Since the early 2000s, Bove—who was born close to Gstaad, in Geneva—has focused on the interdependence of artworks and their contexts.
