Frozen Gestures
November 15, 2026 – April 11, 2027
Frozen Gestures traces the exploration of expressive movement through sculpture from Abstract Expressionism to today. It takes its title from a term used to characterize the moment when Lynda Benglis’ pours of pigmented latex, spilled directly on the floor, congealed into their final state. Her paint spills of the late 1960s marked a major shift in contemporary art by blurring the boundaries between painting and sculpture. For Benglis, the term refers to both a physical and psychological gesture, such as “it was a lovely gesture.” By the early 1990s, Frank Stella also aspired to produce a painterly “frozen gesture,” but with the aim of limiting his personal touch by executing his work as an instantaneous image. Stella achieved this by pouring metal onto sand, as well as using 3D printing that autonomously built out fluid forms, such as smoke rings that simulated the movement of the Abstract Expressionists’ brushstrokes.
This exhibition is as much about painting as it is about sculpture. Approaching sculpture from the perspective of painting freed these artists from adhering to the traditional concerns of sculpture—weight, mass, and support—which preoccupied Minimalists such as Robert Morris and Donald Judd in the 1960s. Working with literal, three-dimensional space also offered a solution to one of the challenges of modernist painting: how to eliminate illusionistic pictorial space without forgoing the optical marvels that make painting so compelling.
Painting had another predicament: it was inherently static. Painting can only imply movement and gesture within pictorial space, whereas sculpture, since the freestanding ancient Greek kouroi (c. 615-480 BCE), which depict a youth stepping slightly forward with his left foot, could dynamically enter the shared space of the viewer. Movement is suggested in myriad ways in the exhibition, such as in the arrangement of David Smith’s Black Flock (Raven) (1960), in which abstract, black steel blocks appear as ominous birds perched restlessly on branches. Other artists in the exhibition aimed to capture ephemeral movements, such as steam rising, as in Roy Lichtenstein’s sculpture of a cup of coffee, or moisture beading at dawn, as seen in Teresita Fernández’s Dew (2003).
Using malleable materials is another way these artists introduced movement into their work, as with the pliable poured skins of paint Kennedy Yanko adheres to the surface of her structures. Urs Fischer’s monumental sculpture Julian (2014) is cast in wax and designed to be burned like a candle, slowly melting over the course of the exhibition.
The frozen gesture as a metaphor for life, death, endurance, and erasure is suggested in Francis Alÿs’ video Paradox of Praxis 1 (Sometimes Making Something Leads to Nothing) (1997), in which the artist is recorded pushing a large block of ice through the streets of Mexico City for the nine hours it took to melt. In Lorna Simpson’s Haze (2018), chunks of icebergs made from glass remain perpetually frozen throughout time. Generational succession is implied by Julian Schnabel’s sculptures, in which his first fully three-dimensional sculpture, Balzac (1982), led to a family of three more sculptures that grew out of the molds he used to cast Balzac in bronze.
The viewer’s own participation and action is implied in the experience of all sculpture in the round, as the viewer needs to circumnavigate the work to see it from all sides. The inescapable theatricality of sculpture was amplified by a generation of Actionist and performance artists in the 1960s and early 1970s, influencing the next generation of Austrian artists such as Franz West, who challenged the traditional boundaries between the sculpture and viewer with his interactive works. West considered even his ‘Legitimate Sculptures,’ which cannot be handled, interactive, as their forms trigger imaginative responses.
Lastly, sculptures by Pol Bury, Robert Chambers, and Jean Tinguely break free from their frozen state through mechanical means. These kinetic sculptures’ animation dynamically extends their gesture into the viewer’s space.
Frozen Gestures presents works by Francis Alÿs, Lynda Benglis, Pol Bury, Robert Chambers, John Chamberlain, Teresita Fernández, Urs Fischer, Lonnie Holley, Karen Kilimnik, Willem de Kooning, Jeff Koons, Morgan Leigh, Roy Lichtenstein, Robert Morris, Elizabeth Murray, Will Ryman, Julian Schnabel, Lorna Simpson, David Smith, Josh Smith, Frank Stella, Jessica Stockholder, Jean Tinguely, Franz West, Rachel Whiteread, and Kennedy Yanko.
Curated by Bonnie Clearwater, Director and Chief Curator
Generously Supported by:
Jerry Taylor and Nancy Bryant Exhibition Fund
Jacarlene Foundation
