The Grid

Pace Prints is pleased to present an exhibition of works exploring the use of the grid, on view June 23—August 19, 2016 in the project room at 521 West 26th Street.

The grid has long been positioned as the trademark of modernity, a fixed, analytical system that sows fertile ground for boundless artistic experimentation. In the contemporary setting, the grid has repositioned itself as an important framework for execution and exploration, homage and irreverence. In the hands of the contemporary artist, the ridged familiarity of the grid assumes an unconventional array of forms.

As the Art Historian Rosalind Krauss notably stated, “the grid extends, in all directions, to infinity.” The artist chooses to either impose boundaries upon it—presenting a fragment cropped from an infinitely larger fabric—or by using the grid as a container for meaning. The grid exists as both self-contained, emphasizing the work as a material object, and outward, compelling our acknowledgement of a world beyond the frame.

The exhibition will feature works by Chuck Close, Mary Heilmann, Stephen Sollins, Leonardo Drew, and Sol LeWitt. From Chuck Close's pragmatic use of the grid to Leonardo Drew’s exploration of a Mondrian-influenced compositional structure, the exhibition presents the grid as both a formal and conceptual tool.

Throughout his career, Chuck Close has used the grid to dissect images into essential fragments of shape and color. Close combines his iconic photographic technique with expressive mark-making to create his 2012 watercolor pigment print, Siena (3/4 View).

In Stephen Sollins’ Untitled (Static), structural patterns are created by blocking out television listings and erasing “distractions.” The grid created through this process reflects the passing of time while meditating on the monotony of everyday life.

Sol LeWitt has brought extraordinary richness to the systematic formal logic of the grid. In All One, Two, Three, Four, Five & Six part Combinations of Six Geometric Figures, a complex series of structures are formed from the simplest of elements. LeWitt uses the grid to record all possible permutations, allowing the intersecting lines to become a means to organize and perceive ideas.