‘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
-
Wallpaper* checks in at Jnane Rumi: clarity, reflection and connectionIn the quiet tranquillity of Marrakech’s Palmeraie, Jnane Rumi evokes a rich and colourful tapestry of Moroccan art, craftsmanship and design
-
Cindy Sherman in Menorca: ‘She's decades ahead of social media and the construction of identity for the camera’‘Cindy Sherman: The Women’, its title a nod to an image-conscious 1930s Broadway hit, takes the American artist's carefully constructed, highly performative works to Hauser & Wirth Menorca
-
A Rancho Mirage home is in tune with its location and its architect-owners' passionsArchitect Steven Harris and his collaborator and husband, designer Lucien Rees Roberts have built a home in Rancho Mirage, surrounded by some of America’s most iconic mid-century modern works; they invited us on a tour
-
‘Her pictures looked like pictures everybody knew were the truth’: Diane Arbus at the ArmoryMatthieu Humery curates more than 400 of Arbus’ photographs at New York’s Park Avenue Armory – every picture she was known to have printed
-
Mystic, feminine and erotic: the power of Penny Slinger’s bodies as landscapeArtist Penny Slinger continues her exploration of the sacred, surreal feminine in a Santa Monica exhibition, ‘Meeting at the Horizon’
-
What is recycling good for, asks Mika Rottenberg at Hauser & Wirth MenorcaUS-based artist Mika Rottenberg rethinks the possibilities of rubbish in a colourful exhibition, spanning films, drawings and eerily anthropomorphic lamps
-
Out of office: the Wallpaper* editors’ picks of the weekIt was a jam-packed week for the Wallpaper* staff, entailing furniture, tech and music launches and lots of good food – from afternoon tea to omakase
-
Out of office: what the Wallpaper* editors have been up to this weekThis week saw the Wallpaper* team jet-setting to Jordan and New York; those of us left in London had to make do with being transported via the power of music at rooftop bars, live sets and hologram performances
-
Photographer Geordie Wood takes a leap of faith with first film, DiversGeordie Wood delved into the world of professional diving in Fort Lauderdale for his first film
-
New book celebrates 100 years of New York City landmarks where LGBTQ+ history took placeMarc Zinaman’s ‘Queer Happened Here: 100 Years of NYC’s Landmark LGBTQ+ Places’ is a vital tribute to queer culture
-
San Francisco’s controversial monument, the Vaillancourt Fountain, could be facing demolitionThe brutalist fountain is conspicuously absent from renders showing a redeveloped Embarcadero Plaza and people are unhappy about it, including the structure’s 95-year-old designer
