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Arlene Shechet

Next Sentence

Past
Jan 6 – Feb 5, 2023
Palm Beach
 
Exhibition Details:

Arlene Shechet
Next Sentence
Jan 6 – Feb 5, 2023

Gallery:

The Royal Poinciana Plaza
340 Royal Poinciana Way
Suite M333
Palm Beach

Connect:

(opens in a new window) @pacegallery
(opens in a new window) @arleneshechet

Above: Arlene Shechet, Speaking of Drawing, 2021 © Arlene Shechet

Pace is pleased to present Next Sentence, an exhibition of new sculptures by Arlene Shechet, at its Palm Beach gallery.

Running from January 6 to February 5, the show will bring together eight works ranging in size from small- to human-scale. Through their effortless combinations of disparate elements, precarious and provisional arrangements, and boundary-collapsing visual paradoxes, these works reflect Shechet’s central considerations in her artistic process: uncovering the expressive potential of materials and forms and setting them in motion.

In Speaking of Drawing (2022)—a large-scale, 3D drawing in space—Shechet merges opposites, from lightness and heaviness to femininity and masculinity. Made of both hand-carved and constructed painted wood, this work, which features negative space running around and through it, functions more as a drawing than as architecture. Every view is dynamic, with accentuated lines of black and pale pink shifting in composition when experienced from various vantage points.

Made of ceramic, steel, and wood, all separately cast, Teasing and Squeezing (2022) features plays in scale. With compacted energy and color miraculously cast, this sculpture is a textural, eccentric piece. Its forms come together in unexpected ways and contrast the earthbound with the elevated. In the intimately scaled work With Wet (2022), light is absorbed and reflected in white gold leaf as the blue crystals in the sculpture’s glaze play with its iridescence.

Shechet will also show three new pieces from her Together series, which meditates on modes of keeping and marking time and has been the subject of exhibitions at Pace’s Palo Alto, East Hampton, and Hong Kong galleries. Color breaks loose in this series, forming a bright palette that is rendered in glazed ceramic in dynamic conversation with steel supports saturated in color. These rich abstractions seem to melt into and around their supports, highlighting both balance and precarity.

Shechet’s long-term exhibition Disrupt the View: Arlene Shechet at the Harvard Art Museums is open through July 6, 2025. This presentation at the Harvard Art Museums in Cambridge, Massachusetts brings Shechet’s recent sculptures, including work created during her 2012 residency at the Meissen factory, in conversation with historic porcelain from Germany, Japan, and China.

On Saturday, January 7, Shechet will join Laura Hoptman, Director of the Drawing Center New York, for a talk hosted at The Bunker Artspace in West Palm Beach.

 

Featured Works

Arlene Shechet, Speaking of Drawing, 2022, painted hardwood and painted plywood, 80" × 33" × 22" (203.2 cm × 83.8 cm × 55.9 cm)
Arlene Shechet, Teasing and Squeezing, 2022, Glazed ceramic, dyed hardwood, and painted steel, 28" × 20" × 17" (71.1 cm × 50.8 cm × 43.2 cm)
Arlene Shechet, With Wet, 2022, Glazed ceramic, white gold leaf, powder coated steel, 18" × 16" × 11" (45.7 cm × 40.6 cm × 27.9 cm), overall
Arlene Shechet, Together: Pacific Time: 9 p.m., 2020, glazed ceramic, powder coated steel, 24" × 19" × 12-1/2" (61 cm × 48.3 cm × 31.8 cm), overall 12" × 19" × 12-1/2" (30.5 cm × 48.3 cm × 31.8 cm), ceramic 12" × 19" × 12-1/2" (30.5 cm × 48.3 cm × 31.8 cm), base
 

Installation Views

 
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About the Artist

Arlene Shechet is a multidisciplinary sculptor living and working in New York City and the Hudson Valley. A major, critically acclaimed survey of her work, All At Once, which the New York Times called “some of the most imaginative American sculpture of the past 20 years, and some of the most radically personal,” was on view at The Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston, in 2015 with an accompanying monograph.

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