LYNDA BENGLIS

American sculptor Lynda Benglis was first recognized in the late sixties with the advent of her poured latex and foam works. This work created a perfectly timed retort to the male dominated fusion of painting and sculpture produced in the development of Process Art and Minimalism. Known for her exploration of metaphorical and biomorphic shapes, she is deeply concerned with the physicality of form and how it affects the viewer, using a wide range of materials to render dynamic impressions of mass and surface: soft becomes hard, hard becomes soft and gestures are frozen.

ABOUT THE WORK:

A series created between 1969 and 1975, Eat Meat consists of massive bronze and aluminum floor pours, resulting in crude, oozing forms. To make these forms, Benglis poured a foamy polymer onto the floor, allowing gravity to do the work of shaping the object. Later, the form would be cast in bronze or aluminum, assigning a certain permanence to the structure as traditionally and historically associated with cast sculpture. In a dissent of this history, however, Benglis’ sculptures sit directly on the ground, refusing the pedestal often used to heighten and exalt an object of this sort.