'BARBARA KASTEN: Structure, Light, Land' at The Glass House and 'CARLTON DAVIS: Humble Beauty' and 'SUSAN MEYER: Group Chat,' at LABspace.
'BARBARA KASTEN: Structure, Light, Land' on view through Dec. 15, ‘25 at The Glass House, New Cannan, CT.
Installation view, Barbara Kasten: Structure Light Land. The Glass House, Sculpture Gallery, 2025, Photo Michael Biondo.
It is hard to imagine a more reverent and apropos artist intervention into a historic site than The Glass House exhibition by Chicago-based Barbara Kasten. The former home of uber-starchitect Philip Johnson (1906-2005), the place is now a National Historic Landmark consisting of 14 structures designed by Johnson, completed in 1949, and situated in a verdant setting of 49 acres. Modern architecture has long been an inspiration for Kasten, in her plexiglass constructions, photo works and installations, so this is a fine pairing of artist and landmark location. The spare, hard-edge forms she uses stem from her interest in early modernist pioneers like László Maholy-Nagy and other artists and designers associated with the Bauhaus. The interactions of her works with Johnson’s buildings and surrounding nature are resonate and remarkable.
Organized by Glass House curator Cole Akers, the exhibition contains fourteen works, some with multiple components, each situated in the various buildings with sensitivity to the original purpose of the structure. The hallway of the small brick guesthouse, for instance, features a series of recent cyanotypes, whose moody blue tones and circular geometric forms complement the round windows and skylights that are distinctive features of this structure. In the main Glass House, Kasten placed Plus & Minus (2025), a single, small plexiglass construction, a more or less cubic shape made of fluorescent acrylic in hot pink, blue and yellow. Glowing atop a Mies van der Rohe and Lilly Reich-designed Barcelona table, Kasten’s diminutive object more than holds its own as it echoes the cool lines and radiant translucency of the house itself; but there is no attempt here to upstage the drama of this iconic building.
Installation view, Barbara Kasten: Structure Light Land, with Infiltration, The Glass House, 2025, Photo David Ebony.
The most enthralling Kasten interventions feature her Infiltration series, tall narrow I-beams made of florescent acrylic. They are especially effective in the Sculpture Gallery, where they appear to radiate searing neon light against the bright white walls of the spacious room. They help to unify and amplify the impressive and disparate gathering of major sculptures by artists such as John Chamberlain, Frank Stella, Bruce Nauman, and Robert Morris that permanently occupy the space. The most subtle of Kasten’s interventions, and perhaps most striking, are two outdoor Infiltration pieces: a dayglow orange-red I-beam placed beneath a tree, and a bright green I-beam nonchalantly surrounded by vegetation along the banks of a narrow, glittering stream. Here, Kasten brings up many profound issues concerning the relationship between nature and architecture, and art and artifice. ——David Ebony
‘Carlton Davis: Humble Beauty‘ and ‘Susan Meyer: Group Chat,‘ at LABspace, Hillsdale, NY, through June 29, ‘25.
Carlton Davis, Untitled (Chicken), 2006 (printed 2025), Photo courtesy LABspace.
The intimate, bifurcated gallery that is LABspace begs for spare hanging and austere installation, but that is certainly not the case with these two jam-packed exhibitions of new sculptures by Susan Meyer in one room, and recent photographs by Carlton Davis in the other. Despite the overcrowding, there are outstanding works in each show that manage to overcome the visual excess. Meyer’s painted wood sculpture Maggie (2025), for example, exudes sheer delight as it plays upon modernist tropes of organic and architectonic structures, not to mention cunningly addressing the history of modern sculpture, from Alexander Calder to Matthew Ronay. The Hudson-based artist also brings up important issues of domesticity and urbanism in works such as Encampment (2025), an approximately 4½ -foot tall honeycomb-like construction that suggests a multilevel housing complex for some futuristic city. Meyer’s Salt and Pepper (both 2025), are colorful and playful constructions engaged with a jagged, quirky and personalized geometry that is no doubt non-Euclidian.
Susan Meyer, Maggie (2025), mixed mediums. LABspace. Photo David Ebony.
In this show, Humble Beauty, Carlton Davis’s intense and vibrant photos elevate chickens, eggs, fruit and flowers to an otherworldly realm. Hung floor to ceiling, his mural-scale Dahlia (2011) print dominates the room. Against a dark, brooding background, the giant flower’s delicate yellow petals radiate from the top center of the composition like sunrays, outward into the gallery space. A smaller photo, Watermelon (2011) shows three half-eaten chunks of watermelon set on a table against a dark background. The image has a painterly feel, like a long-lost Caravaggio still life, or one from the Dutch Golden Age. Among the most unforgettable images here are those of chickens and eggs. The egg is centered in each composition in a way that lends it an uncanny, otherworldly aura. The rarefied contour of each form suggests a sort of cosmic perfection. Most arresting of all is Untitled (Chicken), 2006, an image of a chicken with its eye intensely glaring from the upper right of the composition. The intricate patterns of white and black feathers flow down and to the side in an graceful, circular motion. The fantastic detail Davis provides here transforms the homely fowl into a majestic creature to behold. —David Ebony