“I wasn’t breaking away from painting but trying to redefine what it was.”
F or decades, Lynda Benglis has continually pushed the boundaries and classification of sculpture through her chief focus on materiality and form, creating a sensory experience for viewers that challenges their perception of space. Visceral and tactile in nature, Moretti typifies Benglis’ practice with every turn, torque and fold of its expertly wielded copper pleats. As if floating, Moretti’s billowing copper wings cascade outward while curling inward – creating an illusion that is equally as constructed as it is organic. Benglis remarks, “The illusion has always been the buoyancy of something floating on waves like where the balloon is full of air or anchored like a lead piece with a hook.” Greek influence from Benglis’s travels, as well as her Mediterranean heritage, permeate stylistic aspects of her pleated sculptures – namely, inspiring their fanned and fluted forms. After knotting, twisting, and tying chicken-wire into various silhouettes, layers of vaporized metal, such as aluminum or copper, are sprayed, encasing the form in a hardened, shell-like surface. Moretti possesses an overwhelming luminosity created by the careful blend of sprayed zinc and copper, which coalesce into a breathtaking patina.
“Benglis’s expansive, shimmering, pleated works appear buoyantly, ebulliently, kinetically fluid—like giant, artlessly tied, crinkled bows undergoing their various twists and turns.”
Recognized for adopting and expanding upon Pollock’s novel techniques including pouring, dripping and spilling materials directly onto the floor, Benglis began experimenting with the pleated form in the late 1970s through the 1990s, concentrating on metalized pleats beginning in 1982. Moretti – named after an Italian sports car as an homage to Benglis’ love of fast automobiles – belongs to a pedigree of sculpture devoted to capturing fluid forms in motion. Benglis revisits this intention time and time again, exploring the dualities and dichotomies of her materials and of the physical world. Her pleated works further speak to the importance of physical presence in a world increasingly preoccupied by the digital realm. Her works have been subject to numerous exhibitions including a recent breathtaking exhibition at Mnuchin Gallery as well as an exhibition at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. - both of which included many of the artist’s beloved pleated works.
While Moretti occupies the space of a sculpture, it is simultaneously imbued with many qualities of a traditional painting. The work’s polished exterior reflects passersby as they circumnavigate the piece – converging three-dimensional object and painterly surface. The grooves between each pleat, however, avoid polishing, creating a range of tonal and textural effects as light ricochets off the surface of the work. The outcome is both alluringly ostentatious and abidingly gestural. Ultimately, Moretti serves as a reminder that the human body, like art, remains as tactile as ever.
