Knotting, Tying, Folding" by Lynda Benglis at Pace Gallery

Over five decades of Lynda Benglis's production are condensed in this exhibition at Pace Gallery, which features enameled ceramics, bronze, paper, and pleated works produced between 1972 and 2024, alongside rare glass sculptures from 1985. Since the late 1960s, the American artist has developed fluid and sensual forms from materials as diverse as beeswax, latex, polyurethane foam, gold, and vaporized metals, standing out within post-minimalism for her enthusiastic embrace of vibrant color. The oldest piece in the exhibition is "Sparkle Knot IV" (1972), a knotted wire mesh tube covered in plaster, paint, and glitter, which initiated processes that Benglis would expand upon throughout her career—from the golden, metallized pleats of the 1980s to the extruded and folded ceramics of the 2010s, arriving at the more open forms of the "Elephant Necklace" series and recent paper works. Among the highlights are sand-cast glass sculptures from 1985, in which the artist handled molten glass with Kevlar gloves in an almost performative process, resulting in abstract pieces with titles that refer to living beings, such as "Desert Pupfish"; and "Elephant Necklace" (2016), a work composed of 37 abstract elements in monochromatic black ceramic, arranged in a circle on the floor.