Larry Bell 'Irresponsible Iridescence' to open at 101 Spring Street
Larry Bell, Solar Study 38, 2024. Mixed media with aluminum and silicon monoxide
mounted on canvas 153.7 x 101.6 cm / 60 1/2 x 40 inches, 158.1 x 107.3 x 10.2 cm / 62 1/4 x 42 1/4 x 4 inches (framed). Art © Larry Bell. Courtesy the artist and Hauser & Wirth. Photo Keith Lubow.
NEW YORK, NY.—
Judd Foundation presents Irresponsible Iridescence, an exhibition of new work by Larry Bell at 101 Spring Street in New York. The exhibition is comprised of twelve ‘Solar Study’ works, in which Bell moves beyond pure abstraction to explore narrative two-dimensional compositions of surface and light.
Exhibited for the first time, the ‘Solar Study’ series (2024) is a striking departure from work Bell has done before utilizing new processes and technologies. Following a transition to solar powered-energy, Bell created almost one hundred new works over a short period of time in his studio in Taos, New Mexico. “Sometimes when I’m lucky the work creates itself,” Bell summarizes of the process. “I am only responsible for turning on the equipment and turning it off. The results of the use of the equipment become autonomic. In other words, I can find a narrative interpretation in the order of arrangement of the surfaces created.” Bell considers the series a more intimate body of work—channeling spontaneity, improvisation, intuition, and trust into intimate canvases.
The exhibition presents a selection of works in mixed media with aluminum and silicon monoxide mounted on canvas which advance concepts found in Bell’s ‘Church Studies’ series (2016–2018). Inspired by the architecture of his Venice studio, the site of a former Christian Science church, the ‘Church Studies’ incorporate a shaped frame, which is deeper on the top edge, shallower at the bottom. Both series reference the architecture and place of making—a concept Bell ties to memories and intuition, responding to his environment and experiences. The ‘Solar Study’ series, as a continuation of the vacuum coating process and collage techniques used in Bell’s ‘Vapor Drawings’ and ‘Mirage Works,’ allow him to improvise and create work spontaneously, exploring narrative with more immediacy. Working intuitively this series extends Bell’s explorations into how the surface qualities of materials, colors, and dimensionality, affect perception, light, space, and feeling.
Bell came to prominence in California in the mid 1960s, pioneering works across a range of media which employed light. The exhibition marks a deeply personal return to Judd Foundation in New York, as Bell and Donald Judd were lifelong friends and peers. Works by both artists were included in the seminal exhibition Primary Structures at the Jewish Museum in 1966, the year after Bell moved to New York. Judd was the first artist to purchase Bell’s work, an untitled cube of coated glass with chrome-plated banding (1970), now permanently installed on the third-floor studio of the Judd Foundation site in New York. A permanent installation of work by Bell at The Chinati Foundation/La Fundación Chinati in Marfa, two dark rooms first constructed by Bell in his studio and then at The Museum of Modern Art (Spaces, December 30, 1969–March 1, 1970),1 were planned but not realized.
This fall marks three concurrent exhibitions of the artist’s work in the United States. In New York, the exhibition at Judd Foundation is joined by Improvisations in the Park at Madison Square Park (September 30, 2025–March 15, 2026). Larry Bell: Improvisations is currently on view at the San Antonio Museum of Art (August 29, 2025–January 4, 2026).
In conjunction with the exhibition, Judd Foundation will host a conversation with Alexis Lowry, Curatorial Senior Director, Hauser & Wirth, in November. Program details will be released in October.
Irresponsible Iridescence is part of Judd Foundation’s ongoing exhibition series in New York. Since 2015, the Foundation has organized exhibitions of works by Yuji Agematsu, Rosemarie Castoro, John Chamberlain, Dan Flavin, Felix Gonzalez-Torres, Robert Irwin, Yayoi Kusama, Richard Long, David Novros, Pierre Paulin, James Rosenquist, Lauretta Vinciarelli, and Meg Webster. These exhibitions continue the historical use of the ground floor of 101 Spring Street as a public exhibition space by Judd.
1 Donald Judd, “Statement for the Chinati Foundation/La Fundación” (1987), in Donald Judd Writings, ed. Flavin Judd and Caitlin Murray (New York: Judd Foundation and David Zwirner Books, 2016), 489.
Larry Bell (b. 1939, Chicago, IL) is one of the most renowned and influential artists to emerge from the Los Angeles art scene of the 1960s. Known foremost for his refined surface treatment of glass and explorations of light, reflection and shadow through the material, Bell’s significant oeuvre extends from painting and works on paper to glass sculptures and furniture design. Bell’s understanding of the potential of glass and light allows him to expand visual and physical fields of perception, and his sculptures to surpass traditional bounds of the medium.
He has said: ‘Although we tend to think of glass as a window, it is a solid liquid that has at once three distinctive qualities: it reflects light, it absorbs light, and it transmits light all at the same time.’
Bell’s use of commercial industrial processes in his studio, located in Venice, California since the 1960s and Taos, New Mexico since the 1970s, demonstrates his unparalleled skill and dedication in each step of his sculptures’ fabrication. Since 1969, his studio has managed its own high-vacuum coating system that allows him to deposit thin metal films onto his glass surfaces, harnessing a little-known technique developed for aeronautics to create an unprecedented body of work.
