Anthony Pearson, Untitled (Tablet)

Anthony Pearson
Untitled (Tablet)
2011
Bronze relief with cobalt patina
18-1/2 x 17 x 1-1/4 inches (46.99 x 43.18 x 3.18 cm)

Provenance
Shane Campbell Gallery
Private Collection, New York

About the Artwork

Anthony Pearson first made his name as a photographer during the 1990s. In the following decade the artist expanded his horizons with a new body of work that spanned several media, incorporating materials as diverse as plaster, clay, steel, bronze and paint to explore the boundaries of the sculptural field. The ‘Tablet’ series, of which the present work is an early example, demonstrates the artist's control over form and materials and serves as a testimony of his personal visual language rooted in abstraction.

Each of the tablets have been generated by the superposition of panels first modelled in clay and then forged in bronze and given a dark cobalt patina. In moving beyond the pedestal, Pearson allows his reliefs to expand themselves in the space of the wall yet preserving their identity as sculptural entities. As the artist explains: “I do not think of these works as paintings. I think of them as surfaces or reliefs. They mostly engage with concerns related to sculpture.”

About the Artist

Anthony Pearson (b. 1969, Los Angeles) received his BFA from California College of Arts, Oakland, CA in 1996 and his MFA from the University of California Los Angeles, CA in 1999. Pearson has been the subject of solo exhibitions at the Contemporary Art Museum, St. Louis (2012) and at Midway Contemporary Art, Minneapolis (2008). Current and upcoming group shows include The Sun Placed in the Abyss, Columbus Museum of Art, Columbus, OH; L.A. Exuberance: New Gifts by Artists, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles, CA and Tantric drawings: sites of transformation, Drawing Room, London. Past group exhibitions include Variations: Conversations in and Around Abstract Painting, Museum of Contemporary Art Los Angeles, Los Angeles, CA (2014-15), Abstract photography then and now, deCordova Sculpture Park and Museum, Lincoln, MA (2012-13); The Anxiety of Photography, Aspen Art Museum, Aspen, CO (2011) and Arthouse at the Jones Center, Austin, TX (2011).