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Mary Corse, Untitled (White Multiband, Beveled), 2019, glass microspheres in acrylic on canvas, 36" × 120" (91.4 cm × 304.8 cm) © Mary Corse, Courtesy Kayne Griffin Corcoran, Pace Gallery, Lisson

Mary Corse

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b. 1945, Berkeley, California

Mary Corse investigates materiality, abstraction, and perception through the subtly gestural and precisely geometric paintings that she has made over her sixty-year career.

Earning a BFA in 1968 from Chouinard Art Institute, Los Angeles, Corse developed her initial work during the emergence of the Light and Space movement in Southern California. Throughout the 1960s, she experimented with unconventional media and supports, producing shaped canvases, works with plexiglass, and illuminated boxes. In 1968, Corse discovered glass microspheres, an industrial material used in street signs and dividing lines on highways. Combining these tiny refractive beads with acrylic paint, she began to create paintings that appear to radiate light from within and produce shifts in appearance contingent on their surroundings and the viewer’s position. She first developed her White Light paintings, and by the 70s, she transitioned to making her Black Light series using black acrylic paint and microspheres. The Black Earth works followed: large ceramic slabs that she fired in a custom-built kiln and glazed black. After thirty years of working monochromatically, she reintroduced primary colors into her paintings based on her understanding of color as constitutive of white light. Corse’s art emphasizes the abstract nature of human perception, expanding beyond the visual to include subtleties of feeling and awareness.

Mary Corse: A Survey in Light, the artist’s first solo museum survey, was presented at the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art in 2018 and 2019, respectively. Comprehensive catalogs were published with both surveys. In 2021, Corse was the subject of a major solo exhibition at the Long Museum, Shanghai, which traveled to the Amorepacific Museum of Art in Seoul, in 2022. A focused presentation of Corse’s work was on view at Dia: Beacon in New York, for four years highlighting historical works from the collection.

Corse was also included in the major presentation Pacific Standard Time: Crosscurrents in L.A., Painting and Sculpture, 1950-1970 at The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles in 2011. Recent group exhibitions include Light, Space, Surface: Selections from LACMA's Collection, Los Angeles County Museum of Art (2023); Long Story Short, Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles (2023–24); Particles and Waves: Southern California Abstraction and Science, 1945–1990, Palm Springs Art Museum, California (2024–25); and Plein Soleil: De Renava x Centre Pompidou, De Renava, Corsica, France (2025), which was organized by the Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris. Upcoming exhibitions include Minimal, Pinault Collection, Paris, which opens on October 8, 2025, and All light: Light and Space yesterday and today, Kunsthalle Bielefeld, Germany, which opens on November 15, 2025, and will remain on view through March 1, 2026.

The artist’s work can be found in the permanent collections of the Amorepacific Museum of Art, Seoul; Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris; Dia Art Foundation, New York; The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles; Long Museum, Shanghai; Los Angeles County Museum of Art; The Menil Collection, Houston, Texas; Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; National Gallery of Art, Washington D.C.; Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York; and Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, among others.

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Mary Corse, Untitled (Black Earth), 1978, fired earth clay tile, 23" × 23" (58.4 cm × 58.4 cm) © Mary Corse, Courtesy Kayne Griffin Corcoran, Pace Gallery, Lisson

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Mary Corse, Untitled (Electric Light), 1968/2018, argon, Plexiglas, high-frequency generator, light tubes, monofilament, 61-1/8" × 11-1/4" × 8" (155.3 cm × 28.6 cm × 20.3 cm, overall installed © Mary Corse, Courtesy Kayne Griffin Corcoran, Pace Gallery, Lisson