The retrospective Matter and Perception, at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum (March 5 – August 2, 2026), brings together more than one hundred works produced over twenty-five years of aesthetic investigation, offering an in-depth reading of Carol Bove’s expressive trajectory, one of the most authoritative figures in contemporary sculptural practice. The curatorial project abandons a strictly linear chronology in favor of experimental juxtapositions that highlight the interconnection between installations, structural frameworks and constructed environments. Through a careful management of lighting and spatial orientation devices, the exhibition guides visitors along a path punctuated by framed openings, in which Frank Lloyd Wright’s architecture functions as an integrated sensory mechanism.
Carol Bove, “Cutting Corners”, 2018, private collection © Carol Bove Studio LLC Photo Maris Hutchinson/EPW Studio, courtesy of Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York
The early phases of Bove’s creative shift focus on assemblages that combine organic fragments and heterogeneous found materials, already revealing a keen interest in the conceptual framework surrounding the work and in the nature of the discovered object. As Suzanne Hudson notes in the exhibition catalogue, the artist constructs situations that demand participation, transforming the shaped horizon into a living environment. Over the years this attitude evolves toward a more radical manipulation of technically derived components, where each torsion of the support establishes layers that direct perception toward unexpected balances. The central core of the exhibition explores the artist’s mastery in taming metal, subtracting weight from ferrous matter until it evokes surprisingly ethereal visual entities. A crucial step in this direction is represented by The Moon and the Yew Tree (2019): painted tubes in vibrant tones such as yellow and pink unfold into geometries that appear to float within the museum space. Color does not serve a decorative purpose but modulates the perceived density of the forms; light passes through the structures, generating glimmers that render the metallic surface endlessly mutable.
Carol Bove, “Vase Face I / The Ascent to Heaven on a Dentist’s Chair”, 2022, collection of the artist © Carol Bove Studio LLC Photo Maris Hutchinson, courtesy of Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York
This investigation into the limits of materials also includes Offenbach Barcarolle (2019), where reclaimed steel subjected to successive treatments produces a tension between the ordered precision of the composition and the unpredictability of its original interweaving. The work requires an immersive engagement from the viewer, who is invited to move around the structure in order to grasp how the inclination of a single element can alter the overall configuration. The dialectic between strength and delicacy permeates the artist’s entire production. Bove herself has observed that stainless steel is commonly perceived as a hard and resistant substrate, prompting her to explore the possibility of acting upon it through subtler and more persistent gestures. This curatorial direction finds a synthesis in the series Vase Face (2022), selected for the exhibition as a point of convergence between opacity and transparency. The combination of bent tubes and laminated glass panels introduces a network of luminous textures in which the image shifts according to the viewer’s position. The exhibition thus becomes a changing constellation, responsive to the natural light filtered through the museum’s dome.
Carol Bove, installation view of “Carol Bove” (March 5, 2026 – August 2, 2026) at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, 2026. Photo by David Heald, courtesy of Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York
Bove’s conceptual path unfolds in constant dialogue with the history of twentieth-century sculpture. While recalling the experiences of Anthony Caro and Donald Judd, the artist focuses her attention on redefining the structural frameworks underlying the work. Each proximity between heterogeneous elements establishes relationships between angles, planes and lines that generate an essential formal complexity, free of rhetorical superstructures. The variety of materials contributes to the construction of a stratified dimension in which every component responds both to the internal logic of the work and to the broader spatial context in which it is situated. The installation makes significant use of the museum’s morphology: the ramps and curves of the building shape the optical dynamics into a unified system of perspectival correspondences. According to curator Kelly Baum, each of Bove’s interventions invites a reconsideration of the paradigms of sculpture, activating a direct interaction between the work, the surrounding space and the visitor’s movement. The display alternates compact masses and sudden openings, establishing a rhythm that rearticulates the ascent along the Guggenheim’s spiral as an exercise in sustained observation.
Carol Bove, installation view of “Carol Bove” (March 5, 2026 – August 2, 2026) at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, 2026. Photo by David Heald, courtesy of Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York
The most recent installations introduce further levels of structural articulation. Suspended components suggest trajectories that appear to trace invisible patterns within the exhibition space, while compositional textures of bronze and glass generate reflections that shift with the viewer’s interpretive perspective. Even minimal details (almost imperceptible folds) demand careful attention, transforming the visitor’s passage into an act of discovery. In this sense, Matter and Perception confirms Carol Bove’s ability to recode the art object as an open observational apparatus, in which the tension between weight and lightness continues to question and reinterpret the conventions of contemporary sculpture.
Info:
Carol Bove. Matter and perception: sculpture as experience
5/03/2026 – 2/08/2026
Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum
www.guggenheim.org
Margherita Artoni is a contemporary art critic and curator working between Italy and the United States. She began collaborating with Flash Art and has written for Segno, Juliet, Artribune, Exibart, Inside Art, ArteIN, part of cult(ure), The Art Fuse, and Whitehot Magazine. She has directed galleries in Turin (NEOCHROME, EDGE ArtSpace) and New York (TEAM Gallery), and curated projects and exhibitions with international artists such as Rashid Johnson, Theaster Gates, Ali Banisadr, Angel Otero, Tim Rollins & K.O.S., Laura Owens, and Mika Tajima. She has also curated projects for NADA New York and MIART.
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