LOS ANGELES, CA.- Following the highly successful exhibition and auction Fabrizio Moretti x Fabrizio Moretti | In Passing in December 2019,
Sotheby’s will once again collaborate with visual artist and The Strokes drummer Fabrizio Moretti for KUBE, a brand new immersive installation and sculpture, designed and fabricated by Moretti, which will debut next month at Sotheby’s Los Angeles flagship gallery in Beverly Hills.
In celebration of Southern California’s influential Light and Space movement, Moretti’s installation takes inspiration from this pioneering group of artists whose work challenges perspective, medium, and traditional ways of art making to present viewers with a new way to experience art. The installation will be on view from 2 – 20 December alongside a selling exhibition that will include works from esteemed artists associated with the Light and Space movement, such as Lita Albuquerque, Peter Alexander, Larry Bell, Gisela Colón, Mary Corse, Tony Delap, Laddie John Dill, Robert Irwin, Anish Kapoor, and Dewain Valentine.
“I’m honored and excited to partner with Sotheby’s once again in our continuing effort to challenge the experience of viewing art,” said artist Fabrizio Moretti. “KUBE attempts to blur the lines between spectator and work on view by sweeping both into a kaleidoscopic pattern of mirrored iterations. The experience is customized from viewer to viewer as different reflections fundamentally change the look of KUBE’s mirrored walls. Simply standing before the art becomes a visual celebration of the unique interaction between an individual and the artwork.”
KUBE is an immersive, geometric mirrored room measuring 9-feet tall in which viewers can enter to fully experience the installation’s many unique features. While inside the work, mirrors and infinite reflections envelop the viewer in a series of repeating and illusory patterns that create a total immersive experience. KUBE is also constructed with two-way mirrors, allowing spectators outside the installation to view participants as they move within the work, playing on ideas of viewership and the possibilities of sensory engagement with a work of art. The interior of KUBE also includes Mirror (Pagan Gold to Organic Green) by famed British artist Anish Kapoor, which augments the sleek yet distorting qualities of the installation and engaging viewers in a unique dialogue between Moretti and Kapoor’s work.
Moretti’s KUBE will be juxtaposed alongside a curated selling exhibition entitled Light and Space, which owes its name to the eponymous art movement that originated on the West Coast, with works that share the aesthetic. Many of these works associated with the movement are comprised of unique materials not commonly found in more traditional artworks, such as polyester resins, cast acrylic, neon and argon lights, which were influenced by the automotive and aerospace industries in California. Examples of these works in the exhibition include Blue Circle (1970) by Dewain Valentine made of cast polyester resin, which is echoed in the 2021 work of Gisela Colón’s Morph (Sirius) made of blow-molded acrylic. The passage of light is also a key element within this exhibition, with Peter Alexander’s 10/24/16 (flo Yellow Leaner) (2016) made of urethane that acts to diffuse light prismatically, while Lita Albuquerque’s Bleu Celeste (2018) holds and centers light within a round, indented center made of white gold leaf on panel. The exhibition further showcases works leading artists Mary Corse, Laddie John Dill, Robert Irwin, Larry Bell, and Tony Delap, and taken together the group share their attention to context and the ways in which they interact with light and material to expand upon the traditional space of an artwork and envelop the viewer as an active participant in the work.
Brahm Wachter, Sotheby’s Head of Streetwear and Modern Collectables, said, “In his immersive installations, Fab has a wonderful gift of working with perspective as an artistic medium within itself. Our collaboration in 2019 brought works by Old Masters into the contemporary moment through Fab’s interventions through light, space, and depth, challenging the traditional viewing experience of a work of art. In the same way, this exhibition, and its debut in Sotheby’s new Beverly Hills gallery, offers a direct dialogue between Fab and the important legacy of Light and Space artists that have indelibly influenced the creative landscape of Southern California and the world for the last 50 years.”
Constanze Nogler, Sotheby’s Director, Los Angeles, said, “The enduring legacy and impact of Light and Space art from the 1960s and 1970s shines through in Fab’s wonderfully inventive and playful installation. Viewed alongside many of the pivotal artists who helped define this movement, we hope that guests will see KUBE in tandem with this legacy, and spark new ways to celebrate the atmospheric and experiential concepts the original movement sought to explore—all while bringing historic as well as recent works from these artists to a public setting.”
Sotheby’s collaboration with Moretti in Los Angeles follows the breakthrough 2019 exhibition Fabrizio Moretti x Fabrizio Moretti | In Passing, which featured 24 works by Old Masters that were exhibited in a captivating, labyrinth-like maze specially designed and fabricated by Moretti at Sotheby’s in New York. The concept for the 2019 exhibition design was similarly influenced by the Light and Space movement, creating a meditative yet interactive viewing experience that played with illumination, color, and form in dialogue with historical artworks to challenge perspectives and the accepted experience of viewing art. Works from artists such as Benedetto Buglioni, Matteo Cesa, Lippo d'Andrea, Bartolommeo Ligozzi, and Luca Signorelli were installed alongside neon lights or hung in nontraditional ways, re-contextualizing these significant works within a contemporary lens. Light and Space operates from Moretti’s continued interest in forming dialogues between past and present.
