OUT/ABOUT: Calder & Abstraction, From Avant-Garde to Iconic
The USA has featured regularly in Arent&Pyke’s travel destinations lately both for work and for play. Late last year designer Dominique visited New York City and enjoyed an in-depth house tour of Frank Lloyd Wright’s Fallingwater. More recently Sarah-Jane took a 2 week sabbatical to LA and Palm Springs for Modernism Week and visited iconic and unforgettable architectural works scattered throughout the desert and the city.
While in LA, Sarah-Jane visited a truly captivating retrospective of works by Alexander Calder at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. It is all about light, curves, balance and shadows and it is as if Calder’s shapes have found a platform like no other than in the Frank Gehry-designed exhibition space.
It is all in the sense of trial and error, whimsical playfulness and precise construction for shapes and shadows, for balance and harmony which so fittingly marries the work of both Gehry and Calder. As one suspends in space, occupying volumes the other defines it. Amazingly Gehry has solved masterfully the issue of barricading the works with the illusion of giving the viewer a sense of unencumbered closeness by using fluid plinths and sinuous low steel railings. By using long curved expanses of muted grey walls with the sharp edges of white the visitor is drawn in to inspect the strong steel shapes, then pushed back to breath and to contemplate the weightless finesse of these truly iconic works.
Calder and Abstraction: From Avant-Garde to Iconic
Resnick Pavilion
Los Angeles County Museum of Art
Until July 27 2014
Credits: Hyper Allergic LA Times
