NEW YORK, NY.- The artist Alan Saret, whose groundbreaking work expanded the possibilities of sculpture, passed away May 26, 2026. Emerging in the downtown New York art world of the 1960s, Saret defied historical categories to pursue what he termed “ensoulment,” art informed in equal parts by spirituality, mathematics, nature, and the built environment.

Saret was born in New York on Christmas Day, 1944. After graduating from Cornell University with a degree in architecture in 1966, he studied art at Hunter College in New York, where he began sculpting with wire. Saret later described how using the material “broke [sculpture’s] rigid shell, and a living, breathing spirit emerged.” Following a debut solo exhibition at Bykert Gallery in 1968, his work was featured in epoch-defining group shows like Nine in a Warehouse at Leo Castelli Gallery, New York (1968) and Live in Your Head: When Attitudes Become Form at Kunsthalle Bern, Switzerland (1969). In 1971, Saret participated in the Indian Triennale in New Delhi, choosing to remain in the country for three years to pursue spiritual studies. Upon his return, he had a solo exhibition at the Clocktower Gallery, run by Alanna Heiss before she founded MoMA PS1; his site-specific installation The Hole at P.S.1, Fifth Solar Chthonic Wall Temple (1976) was created for the museum’s inaugural exhibition and remains installed there to this day.

Karma has held three solo exhibitions with the artist since announcing his representation in 2021. Saret’s solo institutional presentations include University of California, Irvine (1978); Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive, California (1979); Newport Harbor Art Museum, Newport Beach, California (1982); Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, New York (1983); MoMA PS1 (1990); and Drawing Center, New York (2007). Saret’s work can be found in the collections of the Art Institute of Chicago; Brooklyn Museum, New York; Dallas Museum of Art; Detroit Institute of Arts; Fogg Museum, Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts; Hammer Museum, Los Angeles; High Museum of Art, Atlanta; Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum, St. Louis, Missouri; Minneapolis Institute of Art, Minnesota; MoMA PS1, New York; Morgan Library & Museum, New York; Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago; Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; Museum of Modern Art, New York; National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC; Princeton University Art Museum, New Jersey; Saint Louis Art Museum, Missouri; Walker Art Center, Minneapolis; and Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, among others.