‘I always like something in my work to be raw,’ says Arlene Shechet, walking ebulliently amongst 18 unseen works on the morning her solo show opens in Pace Gallery’s gargantuan new Manhattan home at 540 West 25th Street. The sun has just come out and she’s pleased with how her towering cast bronze sculpture, Oomph, 2020 looks on the new terrace of the 75,000 sq ft Bonetti/Kozerski Architecture-designed Chelsea gallery. It’s the first time the terrace is being used to present a work. ‘I always have some sense of bringing the inside out, and the outside in,’ she says.
I like the feeling of precariousness – it makes you feel alive
Shechet, visibly energetic, embraces the physicality her work commands. Her sculptures are made from enormous slabs of storm-felled tree trunks (the knots filled in with brass), hunks of glazed ceramic, cast iron and steel, but there is a warmth and humour to her work which at times gives way to almost anthropomorphic configurations that might be missed from some angles. ‘It’s quite muscular what I do. I don’t mean that it doesn’t have a lightness and a female presence, but making sculpture is a very muscular tough activity,’ she says.
Installation view of Arlene Shechet: Skirts, 540 West 25th Street, February 28 – April 25, 2020
The composition of elements and unusual pairing of materials feel as natural as a game of free association, yet belies a serious, technical hands-on mastering of casting, carving, firing and building – and each piece could cause a hernia to lift. ‘There is a casual, not precious, way of assembling the works, but with a seriousness and purpose at the same time,’ says Shechet, who often works on six of seven different pieces simultaneously. ‘I like the feeling of precariousness – it makes you feel alive.’
Installation view of Arlene Shechet: Skirts, 540 West 25th Street, February 28 – April 25, 2020
Shechet, who works between her studios in New York’s Tribeca and Hudson Valley and likes to ‘use words as material’, titled the show Skirts, as a subversive recasting of misogynist slang. ‘I wanted a word that was both a noun and verb’ she points out, ‘so that it was very open and has a lot of associations and people can read into it what they may. I’m not regulating the viewer, I’m not regulating how someone sees the work.’
Installation view of Arlene Shechet: Skirts 540 West 25th Street February 28 – April 25, 2020
INFORMATION
‘Skirts’, 28 February - 25 April, Pace. pacegallery.com
ADDRESS
Pace Gallery
540 West 25th Street
New York
-
Audi launches AUDI, a China-only sub-brand, with a handsome new EV conceptThe AUDI E previews a new range of China-specific electric vehicles from the German carmaker’s new local sub-brand
-
Inside Izza Marrakech: A new riad where art and bohemian luxury meetHonouring the late Bill Willis’ hedonistic style, Izza Marrakech fuses traditional Moroccan craftsmanship with the best of contemporary art
-
Clocking on: the bedside analogue timepieces that won’t alarm your aestheticWe track down the only tick-tocks that matter, nine traditional alarm clocks that tell the time with minimum fuss and maximum visual impact
-
Henni Alftan’s paintings frame everyday moments in cinematic renditionsConcurrent exhibitions in New York and Shanghai celebrate the mesmerising mystery in Henni Alftan’s paintings
-
Inside Jack Whitten’s contribution to American contemporary artAs Jack Whitten exhibition ‘Speedchaser’ opens at Hauser & Wirth, London, and before a major retrospective at MoMA opens next year, we explore the American artist's impact
-
Frieze Sculpture takes over Regent’s ParkTwenty-two international artists turn the English gardens into a dream-like landscape and remind us of our inextricable connection to the natural world
-
Brutalism in film: the beautiful house that forms the backdrop to The Room Next DoorThe Room Next Door's production designer discusses mood-boarding and scene-setting for a moving film about friendship, fragility and the final curtain
-
'There’s an anxiety under all of it': Violet Dennison in New YorkViolet Dennison debuts abstract paintings with new show 'Damaged Self' at Tara Downs Gallery
-
‘Gas Tank City’, a new monograph by Andrew Holmes, is a photorealist eye on the American West‘Gas Tank City’ chronicles the artist’s journey across truck-stop America, creating meticulous drawings of fleeting moments
-
Mark Armijo McKnight’s bodily landscapes capture the tactile serenity of the American WestThe artist’s new exhibition at the Whitney Museum, which is organised by the museum curator Drew Sawyer, offers a succinct window into his contemplative suggestion of queering a landscape
-
Dark, glamorous and hedonistic: a photography book captures New York in the 1990sNew York: High Life, Low Life, by Dafydd Jones, goes behind the scenes of New York society
