Liz Larner’s geometric sculptures explore the fundamental qualities of formalist sculpture: volume and mass, line and substance, and the potential of positive and negative space. Her virtuosic works include 2001 (2001), a public installation that fused a cube and a sphere in a massive, glossy form; RWBs (2005), which she presented at the 2006 Whitney Biennial, was a messy tangle of red, white, and blue wires, at once massive and airy. Larner’s best-known early work is her “Culture” series of the late 1980s, for which she placed odds and ends in petri dishes and allowed bacteria to form naturally on and decay the objects.
Liz Larner’s geometric sculptures explore the fundamental qualities of formalist sculpture: volume and mass, line and substance, and the potential of positive and negative space. Her virtuosic works include 2001 (2001), a public installation that fused a cube and a sphere in a massive, glossy form; RWBs (2005), which she presented at the 2006 Whitney Biennial, was a messy tangle of red, white, and blue wires, at once massive and airy. Larner’s best-known early work is her “Culture” series of the late 1980s, for which she placed odds and ends in petri dishes and allowed bacteria to form naturally on and decay the objects.