Whitney Biennial 2017

Floor 5

Born 1939 in Chicago, IL
Lives in Taos, NM, and Los Angeles, CA

Larry Bell has exploited the transparency and reflectivity of glass to great effect since the beginning of his career, when he inserted a square piece of glass into a painting and titled it Ghost Box (1962). Over the years, Bell has developed coating and laminating techniques in order to tint his sculptures or imbue them with metallic or smoky finishes. On the fifth-floor terrace, Bell has installed Pacific Red II, a work consisting of six laminated glass cubes; each measures six by eight feet and encloses another six-by-four-foot glass box. The multiple surfaces interplay and respond to their urban surroundings, where glass towers abound.