"Lynda Benglis: Bird's Nest"
Known for her exploration of metaphorical and biomorphic shapes, Lynda Benglis is deeply concerned with the physicality of form and how it affects the viewer, using a wide range of materials to render dynamic impressions of mass and surface: soft becomes hard, hard becomes soft, and gestures are frozen.
In collaboration with Hank Saxe and Cynthia Patterson The Harwood is pleased to present Lynda Benglis’s Bird’s Nest, a project of Benefit Print Project. Benefit Print Project publishes editions and unique projects in all media. In order to connect audiences and support the creative programing of other institutions and organizations, the internationally acclaimed artists with whom Benefit Print Project collaborates are invited to donate signed and numbered proofs to recipients selected by them and Benefit Print Project's co-directors.
The brightly colored surfaces of the Bird’s Nest evoke the iconic poured works that Lynda Benglis famously made in the late sixties with, at first, Dayglo pigmented latex and then pigmented polyurethane foam. Although Benglis has shown her ceramic works to great acclaim for more than two decades in significant exhibitions at institutions like the Hepworth Wakefield, New Museum of Contemporary Art, and Storm King Art Center, this is the first project that she has done in the medium to hang on the wall. There, the sculptures join their place alongside Benglis’s celebrated wax paintings, knotted forms, and pleated metal pieces.
Benglis is the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship and two National Endowment for the Arts grants, among other commendations. Her work has been acquired by numerous private collectors, as well as institutions, including New York’s Museum of Modern Art, and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Metropolitan Museum of Art, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, Walker Art Center, and Whitney Museum of American Art.
Opening reception: February 9, 2019 – 3:00-5:00 pm.