Mary Corse, born in 1945 in Berkeley, CA
“Nothing is static in the universe, so why make a static painting? It’s an unreality.”
“Painting, to me, has never been about the paint, but what the painting can make you feel.”
“Art is the experience of our abstract truth and the experience of our human state – our unseen side. Art to me is difficult to talk about because it is an experience. The art is not really on the wall, it’s in your perception, as I always say. Art is the experience of our truest, deepest nature, and experience from the expression of our true state.
In keeping with the West Coast’s unique brand of Minimalism, a contrast to its starker East Coast counterpart, Mary Corse adopted light as the primary subject in her exploration of visibility and perception. Like the work of her Southern California contemporaries such as Larry Bell, Robert Irwin, and James Turrell, Corse’s shimmering canvases are experiential pieces that stimulate a heightened sensory awareness.
Mary Corse investigates materiality, abstraction, and perception through the subtly gestural and precisely geometric paintings that she has made over her fifty-year career. Earning a BFA in 1968 from Chouinard Art Institute, Los Angeles, Corse developed her initial work during the emergence of the Light and Space movement in Southern California. Throughout the 1960s, she experimented with unconventional media and supports, producing shaped canvases, works with plexiglass, and illuminated boxes.
https://www.pacegallery.com/exhibitions/mary-corse-5/
Mary Corse, Untitled (Electric Light), 2021 . Courtesy of the artist and Kayne Griffin, Los Angeles.
Photo by Flying Studio.
Mary Corse, Untitled (Electric Light), 2021
Corse emerged in the mid-1960s as one of the few women associated with the West Coast Light and Space movement. She shared with her contemporaries a deep fascination with perception and with the possibility that light itself could serve as both a subject and material of art. Yet while others largely migrated away from painting into sculptural and environmental projects, Corse approached the question of light through painting. She charted her own course through studies in quantum physics and complex investigations into a range of “painting” materials, from fluorescent light and plexiglass to metallic flakes, glass microspheres, and clay.
https://whitney.org/exhibitions/mary-corse
Installation view of Mary Corse: A Survey in Light (Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, June 8-November 25, 2018). From left to right: Untitled (White Grid, Vertical Strokes), 1969; Untitled (White Grid, Horizontal Strokes), 1969; Untitled (Space + Electric Light), 1968. © Mary Corse. Photograph by Ron Amstutz
Installation view of Mary Corse: A Survey in Light (Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, June 8-November 25, 2018). From left to right: Untitled (Black Light Painting), 1975; Untitled (Black Earth Series), 1978. © Mary Corse. Photograph by Ron Amstutz
