Sol LeWitt: Structures at City Hall Park

The idea becomes a machine that makes the art. 
-Sol LeWitt
The Public Art Fund has created a Sol LeWitt cubeland in the grass of busy City Hall Park, not to mention creating a very informative accompanying website to go with it. Up through December, you have plenty of time to come down and stroll among his 2-dimensional creations.
Worker touching up the aluminum sculpture with white paint

Le Witt, who died in 2007, was a prolific and influential American artist whose structures, or sculptures, demonstrate his Conceptual and Minimal roots. This outdoor installation of sculptures tracks his work from the more recent organic and colorful forms of the 00s to the white cubes of the 70s that began it all. I would have enjoyed seeing more of his later works–Splotch stands out starkly against the other white geometric structures, but certainly the earlier works are more emblematic of his oeuvre.

And so, a backwards chronology:

Splotch 15, 2005
One x Two Half Off, 1991
Tower (Colombus), 1990
Complex Forms, 1990
Stars, 1989-1990
Complex Form 6, 1987
Pyramid (Munster), 1987
Double Modular Cube, 1979
Incomplete Open Cubes, 1974

Pat Steir’s Nearly Endless Line at Sue Scott Gallery

Installation Shot–does not do it justice…

As I noted above, these photographs hardly due justice to the experience of walking through Steir’s installation at the Sue Scott Gallery. The Nearly Endless Line manages to create an energy that is hard to capture without being able to sense all the surfaces of the darkened rooms. There are just two rooms of average size but they seem expansive if not endless. It feels like walking through an Abstract Expressionist painting–a neat experience–and a much warmer one than works by some of her contemporaries like Sol LeWitt.

Another almost useless installation shot
Up close: thin red grid

While the dark lighting smacks a bit of stagecraft, this piece raised the bar for how I want installations to affect me. The precise red grid on the dark background shows off the choas and energy of the white line. Up at the Sue Scott Gallery through January 9th if you want a surprisingly trippy, simple yet immersible art experience.