Online Viewing Room

Arlene Shechet

Skirts

Mar 12 – Aug 14, 2020

Rich in idiosyncrasies, Arlene Shechet’s latest works combine disparate mediums, from ceramics to wood and metalwork, with playfully ambiguous titles that prompt endless associations.

Video

Arlene Shechet Discusses Skirts

In this film Shechet discusses a selection of works on view in Skirts, the artist's first solo exhibition with Pace Gallery in New York.

Utilizing a title that is both a noun and a verb, Skirts is a testament to the artist’s fluid and unformulaic process. Though her works appear effortless and forgiving of imperfections, they are the belabored products of an intuitive and technically fastidious approach, involving casting, painting, firing, carving, stacking, undoing and redoing with no predetermined endpoint. Her expansive approach to sculpture and materials is reminiscent of artists Shechet admires, such as Sophie Taeuber-Arp and Sonia Delaunay, whose work transcends the divisions of painting and sculpture and encompassed innovative multimedia practices, distinguishing their work from that of their male peers. Shechet’s title, Skirts, also reclaims misogynist slang. As if to counter this term’s reduction of women to passive things, Shechet’s unruly, polymorphous sculptures suggest that objects themselves are active and subversive.

The Crown Jewel by Arlene Shechet — Arlene Shechet, *The Crown Jewel*, 2020, glazed ceramic, painted hardwood, cast bronze, 94" × 32" × 19-1/2" (238.8 cm × 81.3 cm × 49.5 cm)

Fancy by Arlene Shechet — Arlene Shechet, *Fancy*, 2020, painted hardwood, concrete, 67" × 18" × 23" (170.2 cm × 45.7 cm × 58.4 cm)

Day In Day Out by Arlene Shechet — Arlene Shechet, *Day In Day Out*, 2020, glazed ceramic, painted hardwood, painted plywood, powder coated steel, steel, 39" × 51" × 36" (99.1 cm × 129.5 cm × 91.4 cm)

SHECHET_INST_NY_2020_v28-Medium Resolution — 150 dpi .jpg — Installation view, *Arlene Shechet: Skirts,* February 28 – April 25, 2020, Pace Gallery, New York © Arlene Shechet

Deep Dive by Arlene Shechet — Arlene Shechet, *Deep Dive*, 2020, glazed ceramic, painted hardwood, steel, 39" × 38" × 20" (99.1 cm × 96.5 cm × 50.8 cm)

Iron Twins (for T Space) by Arlene Shechet — Arlene Shechet, *Iron Twins (for T Space)*, 2022, cast 2020, cast iron, 49" × 25-1/2" × 38" (124.5 cm × 64.8 cm × 96.5 cm)

SHECHET_INST_NY_2020_v07-Medium Resolution — 150 dpi .jpg — Installation view, *Arlene Shechet: Skirts,* February 28 – August 14, 2020, Pace Gallery, New York © Arlene Shechet

The potential of structure is a central concern that Shechet’s latest production explores with virtuosity. Magic Matters, for example, reveals itself as a counterintuitive pas de deux: from one side, two rectangular steel sheets seem to compress a sliced log into a starkly geometric and gravity-defying planar arrangement; from the other, this tension is suddenly released as the same wooden and metal pieces appear to unravel to the ground. Similarly, Shechet’s larger-scale assemblages are seemingly precarious stacks of massive logs juxtaposed with bronze or ceramic parts. In spite of their bulkiness, these works suggest motion, whether the swaying of skirts, teetering of towers, or slow growth of organisms. Shechet’s incorporation of wood in forms still identifiable as tree trunks suggests a kind of taming on the artist’s part, with each carefully crafted piece incoroporated without detracting from its wild rawness. The result is a type of sculpture that confounds the man-made with the organic, a reminder that humankind is neither apart from nature nor unrivaled in its creativity.

Magic Matters by Arlene Shechet — Arlene Shechet, *Magic Matters*, 2020, steel, painted hardwood, silver leaf, 40-1/2" × 26-1/2" × 18-1/2" (102.9 cm × 67.3 cm × 47 cm)

Touching Summer by Arlene Shechet — Arlene Shechet, *Touching Summer*, 2020, glazed ceramic, painted hardwood, 70" × 27" × 31" (177.8 cm × 68.6 cm × 78.7 cm)

SHECHET_INST_NY_2020_v01-Medium Resolution — 150 dpi .jpg — Installation view, *Arlene Shechet: Skirts,* February 28 – August 14, 2020, Pace Gallery, New York © Arlene Shechet

Shechet’s sculptures appear to be suspended between the living and inanimate. An encounter with a piece such as Grammar suggests an immediate and bodily kinship. A bloated and lumpy vessel, it seems to churn with the vitality of a stomach or lungs. Punctured by tubular openings, or what Shechet calls “breathing holes,” the sculpture offers its orifices as portals through which to see internal, structural mysteries.

Grammar by Arlene Shechet — Arlene Shechet, *Grammar*, 2020, glazed ceramic, steel, painted hardwood, 69-1/2" × 20" × 20" (176.5 cm × 50.8 cm × 50.8 cm), overall 30" × 19" × 20" (76.2 cm × 48.3 cm × 50.8 cm), ceramic top 39-1/2" × 20" × 20" (100.3 cm × 50.8 cm × 50.8 cm), base

To Shechet, who has long mastered the technical difficulties of creating glazed ceramics, color is not extraneous to structural problems. “In firing the glaze into the clay, the color becomes part of the structure,” she observes. Even in works devoid of ceramics and hence glaze, Shechet retains this understanding.

Ripple and Ruffle by Arlene Shechet — Arlene Shechet, *Ripple and Ruffle*, 2020, glazed ceramic, hardwood, sand cast brass, steel, 66" × 40-1/2" × 24" (167.6 cm × 102.9 cm × 61 cm)

Shechet’s dismantling of the conventions of sculpture is also apparent in her treatment of the base; the work’s “skirt” is integral to her work’s logic. She achieves this integration through a variety of means: a pedestal-like form might appear at the top of the work, as in Ripple and Ruffle, or a base of metal or wood might determine the contours of the ceramic forms that hug and exceed the edges of its “base.” Casting ceramic parts from these supports to create a seamless interlocking, Shechet’s sculptures absorb their idiosyncratic pedestals, expanding and even encompassing the room, since Shechet choreographs the placement of her works—“a family of actors” in her own words—to form a totality that enlists architecture, light, and ambulant bodies in its play.

Installation view, *Arlene Shechet: Skirts,* February 28 – April 25, 2020, Pace Gallery, New York © Arlene Shechet

Yet Shechet’s reversal of hierarchies is not confined to the skirt of her works. It is not merely formal. Through her work in clay, paper, and porcelain, Shechet has continuously demonstrated the critical force, as well as aesthetic richness, of mediums and traditions historically marginalized as craft, to wit, gendered as the purview of women. Such masculinist policing of boundaries can no longer hold in the universe that Shechet’s art conjures so powerfully—a place of flux and transformation, where the unmooring of oppositions, identities, and hierarchies can be conceived and felt.

In My View by Arlene Shechet — Arlene Shechet, *In My View*, 2020, glazed ceramic, painted hardwood, painted plywood, 58" × 25" × 21" (147.3 cm × 63.5 cm × 53.3 cm)

Via the Moon by Arlene Shechet — Arlene Shechet, *Via the Moon*, 2020, glazed ceramic, painted hardwood, 58" × 24" × 21-1/2" (147.3 cm × 61 cm × 54.6 cm), overall 23" × 22" × 20" (58.4 cm × 55.9 cm × 50.8 cm), ceramic top 34-1/2" × 20" × 20-1/2" (87.6 cm × 50.8 cm × 52.1 cm), base

Altered State by Arlene Shechet — Arlene Shechet, *Altered State*, 2020, painted hardwood, glazed ceramic, steel, sand cast and electroplated (with chrome and nickel) brass, 53" × 39" × 32" (134.6 cm × 99.1 cm × 81.3 cm)

Under cherry trees/ There are/ No strangers by Arlene Shechet — Arlene Shechet, *Under cherry trees/ There are/ No strangers*, 2020, painted hardwood, glazed ceramic, 74" × 34" × 26" (188 cm × 86.4 cm × 66 cm)

Oomph by Arlene Shechet — Arlene Shechet, *Oomph*, 2020, cast bronze, 80" × 54" × 38" (203.2 cm × 137.2 cm × 96.5 cm) concrete cylinder base 16" × 33-1/4"; (40.6 cm × 84.5 cm) Cast of 3 + 2 APs

Installation view, *Arlene Shechet: Skirts,* February 28 – April 25, 2020, Pace Gallery, New York © Arlene Shechet

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Installation view, *Arlene Shechet: Skirts,* February 28 – April 25, 2020, Pace Gallery, New York © Arlene Shechet

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Installation view, *Arlene Shechet: Skirts,* February 28 – April 25, 2020, Pace Gallery, New York © Arlene Shechet

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Installation view, *Arlene Shechet: Skirts,* February 28 – April 25, 2020, Pace Gallery, New York © Arlene Shechet

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SHECHET_INST_NY_2020_v03-Medium Resolution — 150 dpi .jpg — 5/7

Installation view, *Arlene Shechet: Skirts,* February 28 – April 25, 2020, Pace Gallery, New York © Arlene Shechet

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SHECHET_INST_NY_2020_v32-Medium Resolution — 150 dpi .jpg — 7/7

To inquire about any of the works featured in this exhibition, please email inquiries@pacegallery.com.

Past, Arlene Shechet, Skirts, Mar 12, 2020