Galerie Lelong is happy to present its first exhibition of Arlene Shechet, a leading figure in contemporary sculpture, who has helped redefine the place of ceramics in contemporary art over the past twenty years. Bringing together recent sculptures in a range of materials, the exhibition offers a focused view of the work of an artist widely acclaimed in the United States since “All At Once”, a twenty-year retrospective presented at the Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston, in 2015. Shechet has since been the subject of several institutional exhibitions, including Girl Group at Storm King Art Center in 2024.
Shechet’s work is distinguished by the range of techniques she uses and the richness of its surfaces. By deliberately leaving fingerprints, joins, drips, cracks, and traces of firing visible, she approaches sculpture as a process of transformation. Color is also integral to the construction of the work: pastel shades of blue, yellow, and orange alter the way the materials are perceived. The title Shechet chose for the exhibition, “Kind of Blue”, reflects both the importance of color in her work and a certain sense of uncertainty, a state of flux that lies at the heart of her practice: her sculptures appear at once stable and in motion, combining organic and biomorphic forms with geometric and angular compositions. The title also refers, of course, to Miles Davis’s famous album and to his art of improvisation. “For me, improvisation is a method,” Shechet says. This approach is particularly apparent in a recent group of works titled “Touching Ground”. Irregular rectangular structures define spaces where modeled, cut, and assembled clay forms unfold through a spontaneous process. They offer multiple viewpoints, and two of them are cantilevered from the wall on steel supports, bringing to mind windows or computer screens.
Shechet’s sculptures often seem caught in a provisional state: they lean, bend, balance, hang, or appear to have only just come to rest after a recent movement, like “Sometimes A Bird” (2025) which greets visitors at the entrance. When Shechet first visited the gallery, she was struck by the light and the particular vibration it gives to objects. In the Paris space, the large windows and the shadows of the trees play across the surfaces of the works, as in “Magic Mountain” (2026). This large painted sculpture unfolds like a landscape around which the viewer is invited to move.
Among the major exhibitions and institutional projects devoted to Arlene Shechet are the Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston, in 2015; The Frick Collection, New York, and The Phillips Collection, Washington, in 2016; Madison Square Park, New York, in 2018; and Storm King Art Center, New York, in 2024. In 2023, she was elected a lifetime member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Her work is held in more than fifty public collections worldwide, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Centre Pompidou, Paris; National Gallery of Art, Washington; Los Angeles County Museum of Art; Hirshhorn Museum, Washington; Nasher Sculpture Center, Dallas; Walker Art Center, Minneapolis; and Whitney Museum of American Art, New York.
