Robert Grosvenor

In 1966 Grosvenor made Tenerife, a reflective, maroon sculpture that is cantilevered from the ceiling and projects into the room, hovering like a high-speed vehicle trapped in the confines of an interior space. Titled after one of the Canary Islands, Tenerife, like all of Grosvenor’s sculpture, has a strong material presence. The pristine form and lacquer-covered fiberglass surface suggest an industrial, machine-crafted object, but this work was actually made by hand. Tenerife was constructed specifically for the dimensions of the Dwan Gallery in Los Angeles, where it was first shown in 1966; its horizontal structure and the relationship it creates between the ceiling, floor, and viewer are significant formal elements of the work. The perspectival quality of this sculpture is difficult to discern in a photograph; Tenerife is experienced most fully in person as one’s vantage point shifts within the space. The geometric structure of Grosvenor’s early work is often associated with a Minimalist sensibility, and his use of horizontal planes is reminiscent of Frank Lloyd Wright’s design concepts. Yet it is the material and structural ambiguity, formal sophistication, and spatially astonishing experience of Grosvenor’s sculpture that makes it distinctive.