Installation view, Carol Bove: Chimes at Midnight, David Zwirner, New York, 2021
Installation view, Carol Bove: Chimes at Midnight, David Zwirner, New York, 2021
Carol Bove: Chimes at Midnight previews major new works on view in the artist’s solo exhibition, now open at 20th Street in New York.
One of Bove’s most dramatic installations to date, this exhibition transforms the gallery space, enveloping the viewer in an immersive presentation that considers the phenomenological experience of form and the surrounding space.
Carol Bove, Chimes at Midnight V, 2021 (detail)
Carol Bove, Chimes at Midnight V, 2021 (detail)
Carol Bove, Chimes at Midnight V, 2021 (detail)
Carol Bove, Chimes at Midnight V, 2021 (detail)
Carol Bove, Chimes at Midnight V, 2021 (detail)
Carol Bove, Chimes at Midnight V, 2021 (detail)
The Chimes at Midnight works emphasize verticality and convey an apparent lightness that belies their materiality. Composing improvisationally at an unprecedented scale, Bove crushes and shapes stainless-steel tubing. Finished with a highly saturated, matte orange-red finish, these deftly manipulated tubes are juxtaposed with bent sheets of hot-rolled steel.
Carol Bove
Chimes at Midnight V, 2021
Steel, stainless steel, and urethane paint
121 x 66 x 54 inches (307.3 x 167.6 x 137.2 cm)
“When you are looking at them you have to walk around them. You have to experiment on them as a viewer. And that is a process that I really think about in laying the show out. From every position there are very constructed and deliberate views.”
—Carol Bove
Process imagery featuring Carol Bove’s work in her studio, 2021
Process imagery featuring Carol Bove’s work in her studio, 2021
“The way they make contact with the floor makes them seem very light. I think it's because they are not built from the ground up but constructed in the air, using gantries and cranes.”
—Carol Bove
Carol Bove
Chimes at Midnight I, 2021
Steel, stainless steel, and urethane paint
120 x 80 x 57 inches (304.8 x 203.2 x 144.8 cm)
These works confound perception in the way they elide a fixed sense of their scale and materiality. The sculptures reward sustained viewing from different angles, and in relation to the wider installation, thereby “bringing to consciousness the act of looking,” as the artist has explained.
Carol Bove
Chimes at Midnight III, 2021
Steel, stainless steel, and urethane paint
120 x 48 x 60 inches (304.8 x 121.9 x 152.4 cm)
Chimes at Midnight coincides with The Facade Commission: Carol Bove, The séances aren’t helping, monumental works commissioned for The Metropolitan Museum of Art’s storied Fifth Avenue facade, on view through November 2021.
Carol Bove in her Red Hook studio, courtesy of The New York Times . Photo by George Etheredge
Carol Bove in her Red Hook studio, courtesy of The New York Times . Photo by George Etheredge
Carol Bove: Chimes at Midnight opens April 29
537 West 20th Street, New York