Last winter as the Whitney Biennial got under way, sculptor Larry Bell found the museum’s fifth floor deck a fine place for his large-scale piece, “Pacific Red.” The series of six massive glass red cubes with smaller cubes inside was visible from his room at the nearby Standard Hotel where he stayed during the installation last March. Even better, “Pacific Red” was visible from the Empire State Building.
“The original installation was brutally difficult because of the winds and the cold. But we got it up,” Bell recalls those winter days, sitting back behind his desk in his Venice studio. “Each of these parts weigh 350 pounds, and to be carrying a sheet of glass, 6 by 8, in a 45 mile-per-hour wind and 30 degrees is dangerous, to say the least.”
He credited his crew for the accident-free installation, particularly the foresight of leveling floor panels, making the surface perfectly flat. A different perspective came from staring at it from his hotel window. “I think it’s probably nicest around noon, when the sun is real high,” he shrugs, though he has only seen it in winter and plans a return trip in the spring or summer.
“Pacific Red” first appeared in Hong Kong in 2016, coinciding with Art Basel. At the Whitney, Bell has added three more boxes measuring 6’ tall by 8’ wide. Inside each is a 6’ by 4’ wide box in a different shade of red. A variation featuring a series of red glass panes standing 6’ tall appeared earlier this year at The Frederick R.
From Los Angeles
Larry Bell Pioneer in Art, Light & Space
by Jordan Riefe