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. Read More VideoArlene Shechet Discusses SkirtsIn 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. Read More 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) Learn More Close modal View Previous View Next Carousel slide 0 Carousel slide 1 Carousel slide 2 Carousel slide 3 Carousel slide 4 Carousel slide 5 Carousel slide 6 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) $150,000 Inquire How can we reach you? First Name* Last Name* Email* Phone Inquiry Message Have you purchased from Pace before?* Yes No Submit Inquiry Or go back Arlene Shechet, Fancy, 2020, painted hardwood, concrete, 67" × 18" × 23" (170.2 cm × 45.7 cm × 58.4 cm) Learn More Close modal View Previous View Next Carousel slide 0 Carousel slide 1 Carousel slide 2 Carousel slide 3 Arlene Shechet Fancy 2020 painted hardwood, concrete 67" × 18" × 23" (170.2 cm × 45.7 cm × 58.4 cm) How can we reach you? First Name* Last Name* Email* Phone Inquiry Message Have you purchased from Pace before?* Yes No Submit Inquiry Or go back 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) Learn More Close modal View Previous View Next Carousel slide 0 Carousel slide 1 Carousel slide 2 Carousel slide 3 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) $125,000 Inquire How can we reach you? First Name* Last Name* Email* Phone Inquiry Message Have you purchased from Pace before?* Yes No Submit Inquiry Or go back Installation view, Arlene Shechet: Skirts, February 28 – April 25, 2020, Pace Gallery, New York © Arlene Shechet Arlene Shechet, Deep Dive, 2020, glazed ceramic, painted hardwood, steel, 39" × 38" × 20" (99.1 cm × 96.5 cm × 50.8 cm) Learn More Close modal View Previous View Next Carousel slide 0 Carousel slide 1 Carousel slide 2 Carousel slide 3 Carousel slide 4 Arlene Shechet Deep Dive 2020 glazed ceramic, painted hardwood, steel 39" × 38" × 20" (99.1 cm × 96.5 cm × 50.8 cm) Inquire How can we reach you? First Name* Last Name* Email* Phone Inquiry Message Have you purchased from Pace before?* Yes No Submit Inquiry Or go back 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) Learn More Close modal View Previous View Next Carousel slide 0 Carousel slide 1 Carousel slide 2 Carousel slide 3 Carousel slide 4 Carousel slide 5 Carousel slide 6 Carousel slide 7 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) $150,000 Inquire How can we reach you? First Name* Last Name* Email* Phone Inquiry Message Have you purchased from Pace before?* Yes No Submit Inquiry Or go back 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. 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) Learn More Close modal View Previous View Next Carousel slide 0 Carousel slide 1 Carousel slide 2 Carousel slide 3 Carousel slide 4 Carousel slide 5 Carousel slide 6 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) How can we reach you? First Name* Last Name* Email* Phone Inquiry Message Have you purchased from Pace before?* Yes No Submit Inquiry Or go back Arlene Shechet, Touching Summer, 2020, glazed ceramic, painted hardwood, 70" × 27" × 31" (177.8 cm × 68.6 cm × 78.7 cm) Learn More Close modal View Previous View Next Carousel slide 0 Carousel slide 1 Carousel slide 2 Carousel slide 3 Carousel slide 4 Carousel slide 5 Carousel slide 6 Carousel slide 7 Carousel slide 8 Arlene Shechet Touching Summer 2020 glazed ceramic, painted hardwood 70" × 27" × 31" (177.8 cm × 68.6 cm × 78.7 cm) How can we reach you? First Name* Last Name* Email* Phone Inquiry Message Have you purchased from Pace before?* Yes No Submit Inquiry Or go back 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. 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 Learn More 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. Close modal View Previous View Next Carousel slide 0 Carousel slide 1 Carousel slide 2 Carousel slide 3 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 Inquire How can we reach you? First Name* Last Name* Email* Phone Inquiry Message Have you purchased from Pace before?* Yes No Submit Inquiry Or go back 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) Learn More 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. Close modal View Previous View Next Carousel slide 0 Carousel slide 1 Carousel slide 2 Carousel slide 3 Carousel slide 4 Carousel slide 5 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) Inquire How can we reach you? First Name* Last Name* Email* Phone Inquiry Message Have you purchased from Pace before?* Yes No Submit Inquiry Or go back 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. Read More Arlene Shechet, In My View, 2020, glazed ceramic, painted hardwood, painted plywood, 58" × 25" × 21" (147.3 cm × 63.5 cm × 53.3 cm) Learn More Close modal View Previous View Next Carousel slide 0 Carousel slide 1 Carousel slide 2 Carousel slide 3 Arlene Shechet In My View 2020 glazed ceramic, painted hardwood, painted plywood 58" × 25" × 21" (147.3 cm × 63.5 cm × 53.3 cm) How can we reach you? First Name* Last Name* Email* Phone Inquiry Message Have you purchased from Pace before?* Yes No Submit Inquiry Or go back 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 Learn More Close modal View Previous View Next Carousel slide 0 Carousel slide 1 Carousel slide 2 Carousel slide 3 Carousel slide 4 Carousel slide 5 Carousel slide 6 Carousel slide 7 Carousel slide 8 Carousel slide 9 Carousel slide 10 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 How can we reach you? First Name* Last Name* Email* Phone Inquiry Message Have you purchased from Pace before?* Yes No Submit Inquiry Or go back 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) Learn More Close modal View Previous View Next Carousel slide 0 Carousel slide 1 Carousel slide 2 Carousel slide 3 Carousel slide 4 Carousel slide 5 Carousel slide 6 Carousel slide 7 Carousel slide 8 Carousel slide 9 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) Inquire How can we reach you? First Name* Last Name* Email* Phone Inquiry Message Have you purchased from Pace before?* Yes No Submit Inquiry Or go back Arlene Shechet, Under cherry trees/ There are/ No strangers, 2020, painted hardwood, glazed ceramic, 74" × 34" × 26" (188 cm × 86.4 cm × 66 cm) Learn More Close modal View Previous View Next Carousel slide 0 Carousel slide 1 Carousel slide 2 Carousel slide 3 Carousel slide 4 Carousel slide 5 Carousel slide 6 Carousel slide 7 Carousel slide 8 Arlene Shechet Under cherry trees/ There are/ No strangers 2020 painted hardwood, glazed ceramic 74" × 34" × 26" (188 cm × 86.4 cm × 66 cm) Inquire How can we reach you? First Name* Last Name* Email* Phone Inquiry Message Have you purchased from Pace before?* Yes No Submit Inquiry Or go back 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 Learn More Close modal View Previous View Next Carousel slide 0 Carousel slide 1 Carousel slide 2 Carousel slide 3 Carousel slide 4 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 $150,000 Inquire How can we reach you? First Name* Last Name* Email* Phone Inquiry Message Have you purchased from Pace before?* Yes No Submit Inquiry Or go back Installation view, Arlene Shechet: Skirts, February 28 – April 25, 2020, Pace Gallery, New York © Arlene Shechet 1/7 Installation view, Arlene Shechet: Skirts, February 28 – April 25, 2020, Pace Gallery, New York © Arlene Shechet 2/7 Installation view, Arlene Shechet: Skirts, February 28 – April 25, 2020, Pace Gallery, New York © Arlene Shechet 3/7 Installation view, Arlene Shechet: Skirts, February 28 – April 25, 2020, Pace Gallery, New York © Arlene Shechet 4/7 5/7 Installation view, Arlene Shechet: Skirts, February 28 – April 25, 2020, Pace Gallery, New York © Arlene Shechet 6/7 7/7 Carousel slide 0 Carousel slide 1 Carousel slide 2 Carousel slide 3 Carousel slide 4 Carousel slide 5 Carousel slide 6 To inquire about any of the works featured in this exhibition, please email inquiries@pacegallery.com. Read More Past, Arlene Shechet, Skirts, Mar 12, 2020