Video walkthrough

Video walkthrough
'Mary Corse: Variations'

Preferring the paintings to speak for themselves and finding words inadequate, Corse stated at the time of a 1968 film of her making her first lightbox works in the studio, "That's why it doesn't really make any sense to talk about art at all, because art is the experience. That's the only place it has any reality is in the experience."

While this video features her newest body of work – comprised of thin mirrored-edge metal sheets cut into a geometric shapes and applied with black acrylic squares – these works recall investigations Corse began in the late 1960s. The cross form that she has been exploring in single, double and triple combinations ever since, find particular reference in a painting from 1975, in which two crosses in black acrylic squares are juxtaposed with white microsphere fields filling in the negative space of the canvas.

By installing the new works flush with the wall, Corse emphasizes and activates the negative space surrounding the paintings. Here, the wall appears to come forward to meet the work, causing the viewer to question where the wall ends and the painting itself begins, while simultaneously creating a void that sucks the viewer in.

Contains archival footage and audio from the 1968 film, White Light, directed by Greg Corse and from a 2011 interview conducted at her Topanga Canyon studio, courtesy of the Getty Institute: © J. Paul Getty Trust. Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles (2012.IA.114). Filmed by Laura Bushell.