Renowned American sculptor Arlene Shechet has spent decades defying the traditional boundaries of her medium. Her 2024 sculpture, There Then Now And Again, stands as a prime testament to this lifelong exploration. The piece perfectly encapsulates her unique ability to fuse raw material intuition with highly sophisticated art-historical dialogue.
Featured in prominent contemporary spaces like Pilar Corrias, this specific artwork expands the vocabulary of three-dimensional form, demanding that the viewer confront the shifting nature of time, gravity, and perspective.
The Artwork: A Living Cubist Metamorphosis
Measuring 66 x 61 x 38.1 cm, There Then Now And Again operates as a physical manifestation of visual paradox. It collapses the distinction between painting and sculpture, abstraction and figuration.
- Suffused with Time: As the title directly implies, the work feels deeply embedded with a sense of duration and lived experience. It handles space not as a static snapshot, but as an active, unfolding event.
- Sculptural Re-invention: Art critics have described the piece as if a Cubist painting had suddenly detached itself from the wall, come alive, and dynamically reinvented itself in three dimensions.
- The Push and Pull: True to Shechet’s signature style, the forms within the piece bend, tilt, and nestle together in a provisional arrangement. The sculpture shifts drastically depending on the angle of view, forcing an interactive dance between the viewer and the physical object.
The Artist: Arlene Shechet’s Philosophy of Making
Born in New York City in 1951, Arlene Shechet has spent over thirty years establishing herself as one of the most imaginative, fearless sculptors in contemporary art. Working between New York City and her Hudson Valley studio, she gained widespread critical acclaim for single-handedly shifting the landscape of ceramic art.
The Duality of Materials
Shechet treats materials like clay, wood, steel, and bronze as living collaborators. In works like There Then Now And Again, she embraces improvisation over rigid planning. She pushes her medium to its physical limits, intentionally leaving objects slightly off-kilter, asymmetric, or seemingly on the verge of toppling over.
Humor, Pathos, and the Body
While her work shares a profound lineage with rigid, high-modernist abstraction, Shechet injects her creations with distinct feminine energy, wit, and bodily presence. Her forms mimic the contortions, vulnerabilities, and posture of living entities. In her hands, heavy monumental materials become light, lyrical, and laced with sharp humor.
Legacy and Current Impact
Shechet’s contributions to contemporary art have been heavily celebrated worldwide, with pieces housed in over 50 public museum collections. Her historical interventions—such as her landmark 2024 massive outdoor sculpture exhibition Girl Group at Storm King Art Center—have recontextualized how large-scale sculptural monuments can interact with open spaces.
Pieces like There Then Now And Again illustrate exactly why her practice remains vital. She continuously rejects the idea that a sculpture is just a passive object, proving instead that it can be a vibrant, ever-evolving space for renewal.
Would you like to take a deeper dive into how Shechet created her massive Girl Group sculptures for Storm King, or are you interested in exploring more contemporary artists featured alongside her at the Pilar Corrias exhibition?
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