Robert Irwin

Robert Irwin (b. 1928, Long Beach, CA), one of the pioneers of minimalist sculpture and installation art since the late 1960s, will produce a monumental site-specific project for Sprüth Magers, Los Angeles. In keeping with his experimental approach to light, space, and the phenomenological experience of the viewer, Irwin has re-imagined Sprüth Magers’ modernist interior as an immersive installation, several years in the making. Nearly all the gallery’s walls will be removed, exposing the wall-to-floor windows that surround the 5,000-square-foot exhibition space. Inside this glass box, Irwin will install a series of transparent white scrims, each with doorways and spray-painted squares that echo the gallery's exterior windows and offer viewers shifting glimpses of black paintings flanking one remaining wall. As we peer through the maze of scrims, they accumulate and reflect light, moving seemingly from white to grey to black and creating a conversation between visual stimuli and our perception of color, form, and space. On the gallery’s second floor, three of the artist's fluorescent light sculptures will surround a black scrim—an inversion of the dynamic at work on the floor below. Visible only in natural light, during daylight hours, Irwin’s installation will bring a focused presentation of his work back to his native Southern California for the first time since 2011.