Calder Alexander: Solo Show
Pace Hong Kong presents an exhibition of works by Alexander Calder. Alexander Calder transformed the landscape of art with his contributions to sculpture, redefining the traditionally static medium with his kinetic constructions of suspended, abstract forms. He is renowned for his invention of the mobile—a term coined by Marcel Duchamp—in 1931. Rejecting hierarchies of material, Calder used industrial media including wire and sheet metal in his compositional investigations of matter, line and space.
The exhibition will present eleven works, including hanging mobiles, standing mobiles and stabiles, made between 1936 and 1969. During this span of time, Calder was working in his Roxbury, Connecticut, studio—allowing him to work in a larger scale—and traveling internationally, eventually setting up another studio in Saché, France.
The individual abstract forms in Black: Two Dots and Eleven (1958) react to their surrounding environment, emphasizing Calder’s interest in the dynamics of movement in space and the kineticism that underscores much of his practice. Black Areas (1938), a hanging mobile with sheet metal and wood elements painted in black, embodies Calder’s later statement that “the most important thing in a composition is disparity.” The artist’s adherence to a color palette of black and primaries exemplifies a modernist vision that reverberates with the Parisian avant-garde and extends across the works on view, including Bleu, jaune, rouge sur base courbe (1969).
Among the works on view is the large-scale standing mobile The Tree (1960), a garden size version of the monumental work Calder made in 1966 that is in the collection of the Fondation Beyeler. Eschewing strict representation with its simplified forms, the composition incorporates balance and motion, weighted by the triangular vertical “trunk” and using a single horizontal “branch” as a cantilever for the delicate mobile.
A number of Calder’s maquettes are also included in the exhibition. These painted sheet metal works were produced by Calder as a means of contemplating the technical aspects of larger iterations. Maquettes such as Trois pics [maquette] (1967), which was created in preparation for the monumental stabile commissioned for the 1968 Winter Olympics in Grenoble, Switzerland, reveal Calder’s working process.
The exhibition at Pace Hong Kong follows Alexander Calder: Performing Sculpture, a presentation at Tate Modern, London, highlighting the performative aspect of movement in his works. In May, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art will inaugurate its permanent Calder gallery with Alexander Calder: Motion Lab, the first in a series of presentations of the artist’s work. Calder’s work will also be featured in the upcoming exhibition Calder & Fischli/Weiss at Fondation Beyeler in Basel, Switzerland, which will juxtapose works by Calder in dialogue with those of the Swiss artist duo Peter Fischli and David Weiss.
Pace has represented the artist’s estate since 1984. This is his 12th solo exhibition at Pace, presented with the collaboration of the Calder Foundation, New York.
