Larry Bell: Improvisations

Larry Bell: Improvisations celebrates the artistic achievements and lifelong career of renowned experimental artist Larry Bell, one of the most influential creators to emerge from the Los Angeles art scene in the 1960s, alongside Robert Irwin, Ed Ruscha, James Turrell, and others.​

Born in Chicago in 1939, Bell is an experimental artist who has long explored interactions between light and surface through glass sculpture, monochrome painting, collage, and furniture design. Early in his career, he discovered a vacuum deposition technique that allowed him to transfer thin film deposits onto glass panes, resulting in his early pristine cubes that had dazzling visual effects. From there, Bell used light as a medium to home in on how different surfaces reflect, absorb, and transmit light. He later used a vacuum tank and a mounting press to experiment with heat and vapor-coated paper, resulting in mixed-media collage works. His process is characterized by intuition, spontaneity, and improvisation. Although his technique has evolved over time, the result of his larger-scale works is the perceived dissolution of the surface altogether, which allows for each artwork to become an extension of its environment.

The survey explores the progression of Bell’s process from the 1960s through the present day, featuring a wide range of glass cubes, sculptures, large-scale standing walls, and mixed-media collages the artist created using the cutting-edge vacuum deposition technique. The exhibition debuts a selection of Light Knot sculptures that suspend from the ceiling and appear to dance as they absorb and reflect the surrounding light. It also premieres one newly commissioned large-scale work—a cubic form representing the mercurial sun, surrounded by clouded glass evocative of the fog of Venice Beach, California. Improvisations additionally features rarely exhibited collage works from the Phoenix Art Museum Collection, including examples from Bell’s Vapor Drawings (1978-present), Mirage series (1980s-present), and Fraction series (1996-2001).

Credit: Exhibition overview from museum website