Marianne Boesky Gallery is pleased to present an exhibition of new work by Anthony Pearson, the Los Angeles-based artist’s sixth solo presentation with the gallery. The exhibition, featuring work from Pearson’s Embedments and Casements series, embodies a new chapter in his career-spanning investigation of form and material.
Renowned for his inventive processes and sensitive approach to materials, Pearson (b. 1969; Los Angeles, CA) has built a body of work that exudes an intimate, poetic certitude. Through ongoing experimentation with the formal and technical limits of his chosen materials, he has developed a singular visual vocabulary rooted in abstraction that interrogates the balances of positive and negative, light and dark, control and chance. Working seamlessly across an ambitious range of media that includes photography, drawing, installation, and sculpture, Pearson elevates the intrinsic qualities of his materials, yielding an understated and unexpectedly sensitive oeuvre.
Begun in 2021, the Casements are a continuation of Pearson’s investigation into the formal, material, and aesthetic potential of Hydrocal, an industrial gypsum cement. To produce these works, he pours pigmented Hydrocal directly into loosely constructed fabric molds, allowing the liquid cement mixture to spread within the cloth as it hardens. Once cured, Pearson peels the fabric away from the surface to reveal interlocking abstract forms and, in some instances, finishes them with Keim mineral paint, which binds mechanically to Hydrocal, staining the works in deep, rich hues. The Casements record the process of their creation-the moments Hydrocal meets cloth. And while the cement, by its nature, is perpetually hardening, the works nevertheless retain the softness of the textiles in which they are cured-the pattern of the fabric’s weave and the loose fibers of the cotton or linen remain visible in the cement surface. The Casements, cement fragments articulated with an unexpected softness and sensuality, revel in their inherent dualities: soft and hard, chance and control, movement and stillness.
