Joel Shapiro

American, born 1941

BiographySubverting the distinctions between abstraction and representation, Joel Shapiro reconsiders the modern figurative tradition. Shapiro creates abstract geometric sculpture that elicits a sense of movement and engages viewers’ physical and psychological relationships with space. In his recent investigations of the expressive possibility of form and color in space, the artist suspends painted wooden elements from the ceiling, wall, and floor, exploring the projection of thought into space without the constraint of architecture.

He has executed more than thirty commissions and publicly-sited sculptures in major Asian, European, and North American cities and has been the subject of more than 160 solo exhibitions and retrospectives internationally. In 2011, the artist energized the monumental forty-three-foot-tall gallery at the Museum Ludwig in Cologne, Germany with fifteen vibrantly painted wooden elements. his work has recently been exhibited at the Nasher Sculpture Center, Dallas (2016); Kunstmuseum Winterthur, Switzerland (2017); the Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven (2018); and Madison Museum of Contemporary Art, Wisconsin (2018).

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