Anni Albers at David Zwirner

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Brenda Danilowitz has curated the wonderful Anni Albers exhibition at David Zwirner’s West 20th street gallery. Albers is one the preeminent fiber artist of the 20th century. There are s number of her weaving masterworks on display. What I found special about this show was the works on paper. There was one large room devoted to gouache color studies, drawings and prints.

Some of the pieces from the 1970’s really caught my eye.

In each of these three works Albers has used a grid of squares. The squares have been split in half diagonally. The resulting isosceles right triangles have been colored in contrast to the other half.

“Color Study (Blue and Reds)” is a gouache and diazotype on paper from 1970.


“Study for Second Movement III” graphite on paper, 1970

“Second Movement III” two color copper plate etching, 1978

Susan Happersett

Yoko Ono at the Everson Museumof Art in Syracuse, NY

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The Everson Museum of Art in Syracuse New York is celebrating it’s 50th Anniversary this year. To celebrate they have are presenting great exhibitions. “Yoko Ono, Remembering the Future” is currently on display. Yoko Ono had her first solo museum show at the Everson in 1971. A conceptual artist, Ono’s work is often a set of rules or steps that can be carried out by other people in various settings. Some of the work includes Mathematical instructions. The construction “Morning Beams”(1997:2019) falls into this category.

The artist’s text that gives the parameters for installation is posted on gallery wall: “One hundred nylon robes emanating from a single source in the ceiling, suspended from top to bottom, anchored in concentric circles with metal plates”

Ono has incorporated both counting and geometry into to her expression of the phenomenon of sun beams.

Susan Happersett

Leslie Hewitt at Perrotin Gallery

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Perrotin is featuring the work of Leslie Hewitt in a solo exhibition titled “Reading Room” at their gallery on the Lower East side of Manhattan. The show includes a wide range of media, photography and sculpture. It is the sheer metal, white powder coated “Untitled” floor installations from 2019 that offer the clearest geometric inspirations.

Each work consists of a flat rectangular plane that has a few linear folds. At these folds a section of the plane is bent at a 90 degree angle.

Each of the sculptures has at least one corner fold that forms an isosceles triangle with 45-90-45 degree angles that is perpendicular to the floor.

Here is an example with one corner fold and one fold that creates a rectangle also perpendicular to the floor.

This work has a isosceles triangle corner fold, a rectangular fold, then a third fold on the corner of the raised rectangular creating another Isosceles triangle.

The use of the flat white surface allows the viewer to concentrate on the folds and the resulting clean lines and shadows.

Susan Happersett

Apollo’s Muse at the Metropolitan Museum of Art

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The Metropolitan Museum in NYC is currently presenting “Apollo’s Muse The Moon in the Age of Photography”. Commemorating the 50th anniversary of the TV broadcast of NASA’s Apollo 11 mission this exhibition early photographs as well as prints books and ephemera.


This is a page from Charles F Blunt’s 1942 book “The Moon’s Phases ,in Lectures on Astronomy;Beauty of the Heavens; a Pictorial Display of the Astronomical Phenomena of the Universe”.In the center of the diagram Blunt has placed a circle representing the moon divided into two sections. Encircling this moon are two concentric rings of twelve circles

For me one of the most impressive displays was the 19th century astronomical photography. All 71 plates of Maurice Loewy and Pierre Puiseux’s “Photographic Atlas of the Moon”. Here is one wall of the installation.

The multitude of perspectives on the same spherical orb is an elegant exploration of it’s geometry.

Susan Happersett

“Sinnesrausch” in Linz, Austria

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In The center of the city in Linz a huge interactive series of art installations has been installed until Oct 13th. Curated by Katherina Lackner and Genovea Ruckert, the exhibition tagline is “Elastic, Plastic, Fantastic”. The basic elements of visual art as a sensory thrill- point, line, space and time. Both contemporary work and important historical art are included in this ambitious exhibition. The viewer walks through of a circuit of installations situated on many floors and outside on the roof of the building.

This is a still shot from Manfred Mohr’s computer generated movie “Cubic Limit” from 1973-1974. Using straight lines and grids Mohr has shown a progression of cubic forms moving through space.

Mariana Apollonio’s Op Art piece “Spazio ad Attivazione Cinetica”, 1966-2015 creates the optical illusion of a warped plane using black and white concentric circles.

The most ambitious contemporary installation is on the roof. “Tube Linz” , 2019 is by the collective “Numen / For Use”
Viewers become part of the art when they climb into the undulating network of tunnels. The bright blue grid structure looks different from every position. Exploring line, space, and motion.

Susan Happersett

Fashion Show at Bridges Conference – Linz, Austria

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A new exiting component at the Bridges Math/Art Conference was a formal fashion show. Presented at the Tabakfabrik (a former tobacco factory that now houses creative businesses and venues), the show looked like a high end designer fashion show complete with a runway, an announcer, and a DJ.
Models strutted down the runway in clothing, jewelry, hats, and even a set of wings all designed using and representing mathematical phenomena.
Here are a few highlights.

More from the Bridges art exhibition in Linz, Austria

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This year at Bridges there was a number of works made by beading artists.

Kris Empting Obenland used tiny beads to make the sculpture “Fit” . This work features 5 interlocking tetrahedra. I find the use of an alternating black and white beading pattern along the edges of the form creates a striking line drawing of the equilateral triangles in 3-D space.

“The Root Two Tunnel” by Jos Vromans is the generated by custom software written by the artist. This image on an aluminum panel was achieved by manipulating smaller squares within larger squares.The result is rotating triangles forming the illusion of a tunnel.

Susan Happersett

Bridges Conference 2019 – Linz, Austria

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The annual Bridges Math/Art Conference was held in Linz, Austria this year. The art exhibition is an important part of the proceedings. I always find interesting new work feature on this blog.

This year there was a particularly diverse selection of work on display.

Master fiber artist Elaine Krajenke Ellison uses the art of quilt making to illustrate mathematical phenomenon. The hand-sewn quilt titled “The Sum Of Odd Integers” accomplishes the difficult feat of representing all 17 symmetry patterns.

Krystyna Burczyk creates 3-D sculptures by cutting, folding, and twisting sheets of paper. “Platenbau” features curved rectangular planes formed into a sphere using a complex interior structure but no adhesives.

Susan Happersett

The Whitney Biennial 2019

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Every two years the Whitney Museum pulls together an exhibition that is a survey of contemporary American Art. The curators this year, Jane Panetta and Rujeko Hockly, emphasized current societal and political concerns. I was skeptical that I would find work with mathematical references, but I was pleasantly surprised.

Christine Sun Kim series of charcoal drawings “Degrees of Deaf Rage” charts the personal frustration and anger at various situations. In order to express the range of emotions Kim uses the concept of geometric angles. Acute,right and obtuse angles become measuring tools to gauge the rage in different scenarios.”Degrees of Deaf Rage in the Art World” from 2018 illustrates the difficulties of a deaf artist navigating the art world.

This close up shows the “OBTUSE RAGE” of “VISITING ARTISTS WHO AREN’T COMFORTABLE WITH INTERPRETERS”. The artist is making schematic drawings to express personal and sociological angst using basic geometric forms familiar to everyone.
Agustina Woodgate’s installation “National Times”, 2016/2019 consists of a room with clocks lining the walls connected to the power grid, all showing he same time. This is the same set-up used in schools, factories and other buildings for over 100 years. One digital “master” clock sends the signal to all of the other analog “slave” clocks. This created uniformity through out the building and repetition in this gallery. The ever-present numerical time pressure is palpable in the room.

Upon closer inspection you notice the numbers on the slave clocks are being slowly erased. Woodgate has attached sandpaper to the backs of the hands of the clocks. The “master” clock will eventually be the only one showing the digits. By removing the numerals the pressure of time will be somehow eased. I feel this work expresses the way numbers especially when used to track time in a workplace can have an emotional negative connotation.

Susan Happersett

Irma Blank at Luxembourg & Dayan Gallery

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The Luxembourg & Dayan gallery on the Upper East Side is presenting “Irma Blank painting between the lines” The work in this exhibition explores the visual structure of written language. Blank developed a process to represent text through gestural mark making without using actual alphabets or words.

In “Radical Writings, poem for Gaston Bachelard”, oil on canvas from 1995 Blank illustrates the basic geometry of the traditional codex book form. There is a vertical central spine and the evenly spaced horizontal lines.

Using linear parallel brush strokes to substitute for written language, the artist has removed the literal content from the concept of a book and focused on the abstract shapes and lines.

Susan Happersett