Carol Bove is known for creating assemblages that combine found and made elements. Incorporating a wide range of domestic, industrial, and natural objects, her sculptures, paintings, and prints reveal the poetry of their materials. As the art historian Johanna Burton notes, ‘Bove brings things together not to nudge associative impulses into free play driven by the unconscious, but rather to conjure a kind of affective tangle that disrupts any singular, historical narrative.’ (From ‘Rebounding,’ in Carol Bove: Polka Dots, exhibition catalog, David Zwirner, New York, 2016, p. 62) The present work relates to Bove’s recent series of ‘collage sculptures’ begun in 2016, which merge various types of sculptural processes utilized in her earlier works and references to art-historical precedents. To create the present work – the largest sculpture in Bove’s oeuvre to date – 12-inch square stainless steel tubing that has been crushed and shaped at her studio is arranged with found scrap metals and punctuated with a shallow steel cylinder. Elements of the assemblage are painted in a luminous color, rendering its appearance lightweight and improvisational, as if made by clay or fabric, despite its monumental scale.
