Sol LeWitt and Liz Deschenes at Paula Cooper Gallery

The works of Sol LeWitt are once again on display at the Paula Cooper Gallery, sharing the space with Boston born photographer Liz Deschenes. With works spanning almost thirty years of LeWitt’s career, viewers are treated to a variety of the artist’s methods. While the majority of the exhibit focuses on photography, the LeWitt’s geometric structures bring the gridded compositions found throughout the gallery into the third dimension.

On each of the walls LeWitt explores space differently; whether through light, proportion, or habitation. Lit twenty-eight different ways, a simple sphere combines with its shadow to create the negative space of a composition, or disappears as the object and ground are washed out in strong light. On the opposite wall, using a cube as his subject, LeWitt further explores the relationship between a figure and ground proportion. Tension increases as the cube overwhelms the ground, becoming tripartite, while at the other end the object is reduced to a speck. Autobiography takes the ordinary – filled trash cans, electrical outlets, books on shelves – and creates a pair of 3 x 3 grids in each frame. The wall of works captures the often unnoticed objects which fill our spaces.

Amongst the black and white prints Liz Deschenes’ Untitled (LeWitt) #2 and #3 is the only color in the room. Two solid pink sculptures made of UV-prints on plexiglass echo the removed sections of a map of New York by LeWitt. Like the absent pieces of the map, one wonders what image once occupied the vacant space.

(Revised)

Paula Cooper Gallery 521 W 21st St