Carol Bove

“Polka Dots”

 David Zwirner

New York, 537 West 20th Street

Swiss-born and New York-based sculptor Carol Bove has had a busy 2016 schedule. While she participated in two of the summer’s most-hyped group exhibitions—New Museum’s The Keeper and Public Art Fund’s The Language of Things—Bove concludes the year with her solo New York debut, Polka Dots, at David’s Zwirner’s adjunct galleries on 19th street. Known for her collage sculptures in which she incorporates various industrial and organic materials such as peacock feathers, petrified tree trunks and steel beams into singular bodies, Bove complicates linear and conclusive narratives of art criticism, stripping her materials’ connotative natures from their aesthetic presence. However, in doing so, she scripts poetic and referential narratives anew in each sculpture, introducing elements of mysticism and philosophy as well as art history. In this exhibition for example, various types of steel, disguised under bright-colored paint, affix one another, transforming into complex medleys of crushed, wrapped, and flattened entities. 

Evoking traces from the pioneers of the 20th century Western sculpture such as Louis Nevelson, Mark di Suvero, and John Chamberlain, works challenge the gallery’s soaring ceilings in volume and magnitude. “Her primary focus, as well as an abiding feel for form and placement, seems to be display: how things are presented to us, as offerings, gifts, rituals of animal attraction. Looking at art, we often forget that we are animals too.” writes Adrian Searle on The Guardian on the occasion of Bove’s 2015 exhibition at David Zwirner’s London post. 

November 5 — December 7, 2016