Installation view, Working On It: New Canadian Sculpture, The Beaverbrook Art Gallery, January 20-May 12, 2024,, Fredricton NB Canada
Installation view, Working On It: New Canadian Sculpture, The Beaverbrook Art Gallery, January 20-May 12, 2024, Fredricton NB Canada
Installation view, Working On It: New Canadian Sculpture, The Beaverbrook Art Gallery, Fredricton NB Canada, January 20 - May 12, 2024
Installation view, Working On It: New Canadian Sculpture, The Beaverbrook Art Gallery, Fredricton NB Canada, January 20 - May 12, 2024
Installation view, 176 Nelson Road, Fremont Center New York, Fall 2022
Installation view, 176 Nelson Road, Fremont Center, New York, Winter 2022
Epsilon Indi, #28 of 100 Closest Stars, 11.8 x 9.2 x 6.4 cm. A fluorescent yellow filament, astronomical data from NASA. “Some transform the sun into a yellow spot, others transform a yellow spot into the sun.“ -Pablo Picasso
Installation view, What If, The Blue Building, Halifax NS Canada, December 19, 2021 - January 21, 2022
In the “Zoom Portraits,” Pullen presents a series of images of other artists, made over weeks of planning for an exhibition disrupted by the pandemic. The source from which the original drawings were made—the digitally transmitted faces of others on Zoom—represents an instance of humans being transported, scanned, and reproduced, reduced to data just like the stars. As an epigraph from poet Mei-mei Bessenbrugge printed on the wall has it: “A person, being of cosmic origin, can be at one with a star.” -Cronin, R., Sculpture magazine (ret. 01/04/2022)
Kapyten’s Star, March 2022, installation view amidst the plantings of Open Sesame Garden, Brookside Nova Scotia Canada seen through the lens of the plantsman Peter Holt.
Installation view, Open Sesame Garden, Brookside Nova Scotia Canada, June 2023
Installation view, Open Sesame Garden, Brookside Nova Scotia Canada, July 2023
Installation view, Open Sesame Garden, Brookside Nova Scotia Canada, August 2023
Installation view, The Blue Building Gallery, Bluey (aka GI 15) 2021, blue powder-coated steel, 77 x 52 x 69 inches (170 x 132 x 175 cm)
‘… a generosity of scale -opens up for us- no matter what the dimension happens to be.’ for art historian Pierre Schneider, ‘Looking big -space as quantity- is a matter of professionalism and feeling big -space as quality- is a matter of spirit.’
Blimey (aka GI15) 2022, installation view amidst the plantings in January, Open Sesame Garden, Brookside Nova Scotia Canada (photo: P. Holt)
Bluey (blue powdercoated steel), image courtesy of Open Sesame Garden, Nova Scotia Canada, January 2022
The wire-frame Outliers #1–3 depict three stars that were too large to be 3D–printed. Like their smaller thermoplastic cousins, these steel sculptures are brightly colored in fluorescent orange, neon yellow, and sky blue. While their spindly forms seem weightless, almost without substance, they fill most of the space in the gallery, routing viewers around in a geometric dance. Though the Outliers sit solidly on the ground, one can’t help but see them as though they were floating in space, crystalline bubbles visible only at their edges.
Pinky (aka GI280b), image courtesy of Open Sesame Garden, Brookside Nova Scotia Canada, in February 2022,
Bluey (aka Gl 15) photographed beside the White Sumac, image courtesy of Open Sesame Garden in January 2022, Brookside Nova Scotia Canada
Pinky (aka GI280b) in July 2022, amidst the plantings, Open Sesame Garden, a naturalistic perennial garden, Brookside NS Canada (photo: P. Holt)
installation view, 2021, What If, The Blue Building Gallery, K’jipuktuk | Halifax N.S. Canada
Of the exhibition Ray Cronin writes, “New York-based, Canadian sculptor Lucy Pullen, who studied spatial analysis and visualization for two years after receiving a BFA from the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design and an MFA from Temple University’s Tyler School of Art, demonstrates her mastery of both science and art in “What If,” her current exhibition of sculpture and drawing (on view through January 21, 2022). The featured works—a new edition of “100 Closest Stars,” First realized in 2016; powder-coated steel “Outliers” (2021); and 16 mono-print “Zoom Portraits” (2021) developed from drawings made during video calls—evoke the near infinite expansiveness of our technological environment, as well as the claustrophobia of our pandemic times. Trapped in an e-meeting, we can nonetheless visit the stars.
“100 Closest Stars” consists of 100 3D-printed crystalline forms ranging in size from a baseball to a football, arrayed together along one long wall in a grid five sculptures high and 20 across. Appearing in a variety of colors—from vibrant scarlet, vivid blue, and bright green to Day-Glo yellow—each “star” is rendered using the astronomical data that locates it in the night sky, a process that involves a form of spatial analysis called Voronoi geometry, which produces the unfamiliar, faceted shapes. Each form is unique, its angles and facets reflecting the shifting position that it holds vis-à-vis our planet as we plummet through the depths of space in our expanding universe. Solid yet vertiginous, “100 Closest Stars” evokes both the immensity of space and the intimacy of an object that can easily be held in one’s hand, or—through mathematics—in one’s mind.
Pinky (aka GI280b), pink powder coated steel, 92 x 40 x 51 inches
RAL is the European colour matching system established in 1927 as the Imperial Committee for Delivery and Quality Assurance. The sculptures are made of powder coated steel. The pink is RAL 3015. The yellow is RAL 1033 (yellow), and RAL 5012 (blue).
Nested view #3, powder-coated steel, image courtesy of the artist & The Blue Building Gallery
Let’s go outside.
Kapetyn’s Star, 2021, yellow powder-coated steel, 91 x 74.5 x 59 inches
Colours open linear forms to offer a view through six foot sculptures made of steel. The yellow is RAL 1033. The sculptures are glass-like, transparent framing devices that accommodate variable points of view totally connected to where you stand.