Robert Irwin + Mary Corse

Pace Gallery is honored to present Robert Irwin and Mary Corse: Parallax, an exhibition that brings together the work of two pioneering American artists. Marking the first time their work has been brought into direct dialogue, this exhibition explores the intersections and convergences between these two artists’ radical experiments with light, perception, and the role of the viewer. Opening on 9 October, coinciding with Frieze London, the ground floor galleries will place Corse’s iconic White Inner Band paintings in conversation with the largest examples to date from Irwin’s Unlight series. The lower ground floor gallery will hold an immersive, site-specific light installation by Irwin.

This exhibition comes at a significant moment for both artists, each of whom has been recognized by the Dia Art Foundation this year for their significant contributions to American art. Irwin—whose work Full Room Skylight – Scrim V – Dia Beacon (1972/2022) is currently the subject of an exhibition at Dia Beacon—was honored as part of the Foundation’s Spring Benefit in May, while Corse, who was the subject of an exhibition at Dia Beacon that was on view from 2018 to 2022, will receive her honour in October.

On October 26th, the Institute of Contemporary Arts (ICA) will present the European premiere of Robert Irwin: A Desert of Pure Feeling, a feature documentary about legendary California light and space artist Robert Irwin, whose decade-spanning career has profoundly influenced generations of artists. The screening is presented in partnership with Pace and will be followed by a Q&A with Lawrence Weschler. Additional screenings at the ICA will be held from October 27th. Book tickets and learn more (opens in a new window) here.

While both artists developed work that is intimately connected to the distinctive conditions of Southern California in the 20th century, they worked independently and never had a direct relationship. Irwin was more closely associated with the Light and Space movement, which eschewed the practice of object-making; while Corse developed her own independent path, developing a phenomenological mode of painting. At stake for both Corse and Irwin, however, is the abstract nature of human perception. Since the 1950s and 60s, they have each explored modes of artmaking that transcend and subvert convention to create multi-sensorial experiences of viewing.

Widely considered the originator of the California Light and Space movement, Irwin’s longstanding relationship with Pace spans seven decades. Arne Glimcher, the gallery’s founder, first exhibited Irwin’s work in New York in 1966, introducing his radical innovations to an East Coast audience for the first time. Since the Sixties, Irwin has influenced numerous subsequent generations of artists and charted new frontiers in contemporary theory and praxis. It was in the context of this innovative time in the 1960s that Corse, seventeen years Irwin’s junior, began her own artistic practice that pursued entirely different terrain. Unlike Irwin, who abandoned his early work as a painter in favor of a sculptural practice involving pure light, Corse remained committed to the possibilities of painting. She began working with shaped, bevelled-edge canvases, plexiglass lightboxes powered by tesla coils, and, most significantly, glass microspheres, which she developed a technique of layering onto the surface of her paintings. Despite their divergent practices, both artists embraced the presence of the viewer as the primary component of the work, harnessing light and shadow as both subject and material.

Irwin’s ongoing Unlight series is the latest development in the artist and theoretician’s career-long investigation into human perception and the phenomenological conditions of light and space. Playfully titled after blues and rock albums, the Unlight works are comprised of arrays of six-foot long fluorescent tubes installed vertically on the wall, each unlit bulb shrouded in translucent gels and electrical tape. Rhythmically interspersed between the glass bulbs are empty aluminum fixtures and panels of grey and blue paint applied directly onto the gallery wall. Stretching over four meters in width, Irwin’s large-scale installations—made from humble, industrial materials—produce opulent results, oscillating as the viewer moves through space, to expand beyond their peripheral vision and draw their gaze into the works’ dynamic and complex depths.