She Said She Said" by Arlene Shechet at Pace Gallery

Aluminum, Cor-Ten steel, and clay are given new life in Arlene Shechet's first solo exhibition at Pace Gallery in New York since 2020, which features monumental metal sculptures and ceramic pieces of a more intimate, yet equally powerful, scale. Continuing the spirit of "Girl Group," her acclaimed 2024 exhibition at Storm King Art Center, the monumental metal sculptures display organic and biomorphic curves that open up voids of empty space, revealing the cuts, folds, welds, and joints that compose the artist's process of assembly and disassembly—a direct link to the clay work in the "Touching Ground" series, which revives the ancient ceramic technique of terra sigillata, used in Greek and Roman pottery: layers of refined liquid clay are applied and absorbed, then burnished to a luminous, unglazed finish, in shades of red, black, and orange that recall classical ceramics. Partly inspired by Agnes Martin's painterly process, Shechet describes clay as a direct drawing material, connected to the body itself. The exhibition's title plays with the idea of a rumor that transforms as it is passed from person to person—a metaphor for abstraction itself—and the exhibition also includes folding aluminum chairs made by the artist, part of her recurring practice of creating seating for the public to pause before the work.