SITE Santa Fe presents Helen Pashgian: Presences, the first solo presentation of Los Angeles-based artist Helen Pashgian in New Mexico. The exhibition (November 19, 2021-March 27, 2022) delivers long-overdue recognition to this trailblazing artist’s six-decade career and celebrates her contributions to the Light and Space movement. Illuminating the breadth and depth of Helen Pashgian’s work, the exhibition centers on her critically acclaimed large-scale sculptural installation, Untitled (2012-13), which premiered at the Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art in 2014, a selection of spheres and lenses, some newly commissioned, that will take viewers on a journey through poetic investigations of light and space.
Throughout her career, Pashgian has employed light as both medium and message. Using cast resin material, she explores light in solid form, creating immersive viewing experiences to investigate illusion and perception. As a child, Pashgian was immersed in the landscape of Southern California and played in tidal pools, which influenced her understanding of light as a living entity. Much like reflecting and refracting light on water, Pashgian’s sculptures subtly shift as the viewer moves around and through them.
Helen Pashgian: Presences coincides with several exciting events featuring Light and Space, an exhibition at Copenhagen Contemporary (November 25, 2021-September 9, 2022), Spheres and Lenses at Lehmann Maupin in New York (November 4-December 8, 2021), and the release of a new publication by Radius Books titled Helen Pashgian: Spheres and Lenses, a full-color book documenting the artist's work from the 1960s to the present. The book will be available for purchase at curated: The Store at SITE Santa Fe.
About Helen Pashgian
Born in 1934 in Pasadena, California, Pashgian is a pre-eminent member of the 1960s Light and Space movement in Southern California. Over the course of her career, Pashgian has produced a significant series of sculptures composed of vibrantly colored columns, discs, and spheres that often feature an isolated element that appears suspended, embedded, or encased within. Helen Pashgian: Presences is organized by SITE Santa Fe and curated by Brandee Caoba.