Helmut Lang

at Sperone Westwater

+ Sperone Westwater

Lang’s artistic practice is characterized by his use of materials and textures, assembled from diverse sources and repurposed. Lang has stated he prefers materials “with a certain history, elements with irreplaceable presence and with scars and memories of a former purpose.” Shredded fragments from his "Séance de travail" archive serve as raw material for the largest series of works and are transmuted with resin and pigment into a series of pillar-like sculptures, each measuring between 10 and 12 feet high. As Lang has observed, “the substance of artists' lives has always been the subject of their art." The resulting columnar forms exude an organic quality, a starting point for a larger meditation on acts of creative destruction and gestures of renewal. The sculptures appear both hard and fragile. Their geometric shape and structure are juxtaposed with the random accumulation of archival fragments contained within. In this group of nearly 200, each assumes a distinct individualized character.
Sperone Westwater