Lynda Benglis Explores Tactile Extremes in Sculptural Exhibition

Pace Gallery presents a compelling new exhibition that celebrates the extraordinary vision of Lynda Benglis, one of contemporary art’s most inventive sculptors. “KNOTTING, TYING, FOLDING” showcases a remarkable assemblage of works that traverse the artist’s sustained investigation into the profound relationship between surface treatment, chromatic intensity and three dimensional form.

Benglis’s practice has long been defined by her fearless oscillation between extremes, a philosophical approach that finds vivid expression throughout this carefully curated presentation. Her glazed ceramic sculptures emerge as objects of sensuous refinement, their surfaces burnished and lustrous, whilst her bronze works command attention through their architectural presence and tactile richness. Works fashioned from pleated glass reveal the artist’s innovative engagement with materiality, playing with transparency and light in ways that challenge our conventional understanding of the medium. Paper sculptures, delicate yet purposeful, introduce an additional dimension of textural complexity.

A Study in Surface and Form

The artist has articulated her enduring fascination with these investigations, describing her practice as one that continually swings between poles of coloration and texture. This pendulum movement between contrasting approaches serves not merely as aesthetic strategy but as a methodology for discovery itself. By embracing extremes rather than seeking middle ground, Benglis reveals hidden properties of materials and illuminates the intricate dialogues that surface colour maintains with sculptural form.

Each work in the exhibition represents a moment of deliberate experimentation, a gesture that refuses complacency and instead pushes toward new understandings of what sculpture might express. The knotted, tied and folded elements referenced in the exhibition’s title suggest both process and outcome, revealing the artist’s hand whilst simultaneously transcending mere gesture toward something more profound and universal.

This exhibition represents an essential encounter with one of contemporary art’s most intellectually rigorous and visually enchanting practitioners. The works command contemplation, inviting visitors to experience the subtle chromatic modulations, textural variations and formal innovations that have defined Benglis’s celebrated career.

“KNOTTING, TYING, FOLDING” remains on view at Pace Gallery’s Chelsea location through October 24.

Imagery courtesy of Pace Gallery (@pacegallery).