David Kordansky Gallery is pleased to present an online exhibition featuring a group of new wall-based sculptures by Anthony Pearson. Produced using lengths of poured cement, these sculptures have evolved organically from previous bodies of work—including those made in bronze and photography, as well as cement—and represent the latest iterations of Pearson’s ongoing, subtly expansive project. Pearson filters hands-on material explorations through his awareness of light, mood, and other ambient factors that are ordinarily perceived as ephemeral or ineffable.

If you are interested in purchasing the featured works or inquiring about additional works by Anthony Pearson, please click "INQUIRE" below to email our team. The exhibition will be on view through December 17, 2021.

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Anthony Pearson

Untitled (Casement), 2021

canvas embedded in pigmented Hydrocal

28 1/2 x 46 x 1 inches

(72.4 x 116.8 x 2.5 cm)

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The new objects (which Pearson calls Casements) are, in fact, records of processes of change and transformation in which the play between solid and empty volumes is given vivid form in color, shape, weight, and implied movement. To produce them, Pearson pours pigmented cement into bunched areas of fabric that hold their shape only temporarily. Each work is, therefore, the result of an interaction between two materials that are in flux. As the artist responds to both the liquid nature of the cement in its original state and the unstable shape and dimensions of the fabric into which he pours it, he must remain attuned to slight nuances in their behavior, maintaining balance between their active and passive qualities. Once hardened, however, the surface and texture of the cement demand other kinds of attention while Pearson brings them toward completion: the objects retain not only impressions of the fabric that gave them their forms, but also barely visible fibers that remain affixed to them in the wake of this generative contact.

Anthony Pearson

Untitled (Casement), 2021

interlock cotton embedded in pigmented Hydrocal

40 x 35 x 3/4 inches

(101.6 x 88.9 x 1.9 cm)

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All of these elements are taken into account as Pearson navigates the languages and trajectories of painting and sculpture alike. The Casements speak to both mediums while positing possibilities for looking and sensorial experience that cannot be fully contained within either of them. In so doing, they open multiple modes of perception at once, illuminating the action of the eye as well as the movement of the mind.

Anthony Pearson

Untitled (Casement), 2021

canvas embedded in pigmented Hydrocal

80 x 44 x 3/4 inches

(203.2 x 111.8 x 1.9 cm)

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Anthony Pearson

Untitled (Casement), 2021

linen embedded in pigmented Hydrocal

38 x 36 x 3/4 inches

(96.5 x 91.4 x 1.9 cm)

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The Casements also communicate the rigorous trajectory of Pearson’s work until this point—the play of positive and negative that animates their making, for instance, has roots in both his earliest photographic experiments and his small-, medium-, and large-scale bronze objects alike, all of which were dependent upon the translation of one kind of material into another. While evoking earlier work in these other mediums, the Casements also demonstrate his increasingly broad view of the ways in which objects can occupy space. In this sense, they are the latest iterations of an ethos that is best described as architectural. Limited neither to a physical or non-physical orientation toward the built environment alone, they embody and symbolize the confluences of light, color, feeling, substance, memory, and imagination that suffuse all spaces—including psychological and emotional ones.

Anthony Pearson

Untitled (Casement), 2021

interlock cotton embedded in pigmented Hydrocal

27 x 35 x 1/2 inches

(68.6 x 88.9 x 1.3 cm)

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Anthony Pearson has been the subject of solo exhibitions at the Contemporary Art Museum, St. Louis (2012) and Midway Contemporary Art, Minneapolis (2008). Institutional group exhibitions include Variations: Conversations in and Around Abstract Painting, Los Angeles County Museum of Art (2014); second nature: abstract photography then and now, deCordova Sculpture Park and Museum, Lincoln, Massachusetts (2012); and The Anxiety of Photography, Aspen Art Museum, Colorado, and Arthouse at the Jones Center, Austin, Texas (2011). His work is in the permanent collections of institutions including the Art Institute of Chicago; Hammer Museum, Los Angeles; Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive, California; Los Angeles County Museum of Art; Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; and Walker Art Center, Minneapolis. In 2019, a comprehensive monograph dedicated to Pearson’s multifaceted work was published by Inventory Press. Pearson lives and works in Los Angeles.

To learn more about Anthony Pearson, please view these articles from Forbes and Paper Monument, and this excerpt of an essay by curator Alex Klein from the artist's 2019 monograph, available for purchase here.

Artwork photography by Lee Thompson
Videography by Tony Ung
Music in video: "Going Through the Veil - Becoming a Swan" from Hearing Music (2016) by Joanna Brouk