When I walked up the stairs to the Ruth Asawa exhibit in the David Zwirner Gallery the first thing that met my eyes was a little biography and background information about Ruth Asawa, plastered on the white wall. I took the time to read this and it detailed how Asawa’s works were under-appreciated during her lifetime, as it is with many great artists. The fact that she was a female Japanese-American contributed to this bias against her as well as the controversy of her work itself. In the readings it mentioned what a challenge it was for Asawa to get her work featured, or even considered, as sculptures. Her works challenged that of the conventional sculpture, with her emphasis on transparency, shadow, and movement.

One thing that I particularly noticed and enjoyed about Asawa’s work was this apparent movement in her sculptures. Being suspended from the ceiling by a string, many of her sculptures did indeed actually move, slightly twirling. Even without this actual movement the sculptures do indeed move your eye to a focal point and then throughout the entire piece, creating another level to the movement of her works. Many of the pieces can be related to something of movement, such as a water droplet falling and hitting a puddle. The vertical structure of many of her sculptures draws the eye up and down, hitting the many shapes she has created within and without the sculpture. This also fascinated me, that there was interlocking shapes of separate wire on a single sculpture, creating many unique geometric shapes. Asawa herself said, “What I was excited by was I could make a shape that was inside and outside at the same time.”

 

Another thing I particularly enjoyed about Asawa’s works is that the sculptures, aided by the surrounding white walls and low lighting, work together to form an entirely different picture at every perspective. The works flow and move together, depending where you are standing, giving you a whole new appreciation for a work, or set of works. The pieces complimented each other, layering on top of one another. This gave a whole new visual appeal to Asawa’s works, as each played on the space and structure of the work behind, in front of, or adjacent to it.

 

Overall, I enjoyed Asawa’s works and the exhibition at David Zwirner. I felt that her works were unique, and definitely like nothing I had ever seen before. When I think of the word sculpture, this is not what I would have pictured, but I feel as if it takes sculpture to a whole different level. By utilizing the element of transparency, you can have a work of art within, as well as without. The white walls of the gallery display the work rather well, not distracting from the pieces, while giving a nice background for the shadows to play off of. I throughly enjoyed Asawa’s work and would definitely go back to see another exhibit of her work in the future.