Suzanne Blank Redstone | Catching Light: Showcasing six decades of pioneering Modernist and Geometric work

10 May - 28 Jun 2025

Overview

CLOSE Gallery celebrates Suzanne Blank Redstone at 80. Showcasing six decades of pioneering Modernist and Geometric work. Building from her celebrated 1960's Portal Series, Suzanne's practice continues to "explore how we see by creating environments that interact with light."

CLOSE Gallery presents a major exhibition celebrating SIX decades of work by Suzanne Blank Redstone, opening on 10 May and running to 28 June. On the occasion of the artist’s 80th birthday this year, Catching Light is an overdue survey giving unprecedented insight into Redstone’s influential, lively and vivid contributions to painting, sculpture and public art.

Rooted in the mid-century aesthetic principles of modernism and the Bauhaus school’s egalitarian approach to creating Gesamtkunstwerk, Redstone’s works harness the potent possibilities in light, geometry and colour, prompting dazzling and perception-bending effects in the viewer, and often evoking strong sensory and emotional responses. Sharing affinities with several movements, including Geometric Abstraction, Light and Space and Op Art, this exhibition repositions Redstone’s importance as a key figure in contemporary art.

Raised in Queens, New York, Redstone earned a BFA from the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD) and an MFA from the University of Pennsylvania. Catching Light includes explorations with plaster reliefs from the late 1960's, delicate, handcrafted pieces where colour is applied to create reflective contrasts against white surfaces, to produce subtle illusions of light and colour. A collection of Redstone’s light sculptures, often intended as proposals for building façades, are also on show. Creating environments that interact with light as it changes throughout the day, these works engage with geometric abstraction, featuring curvilinear forms that blur the boundaries between geometry and biomorphism. Redstone’s exploration of these themes places her within the context of a male-dominated tradition while also highlighting her distinct voice within it.

Tracing Redstone’s trajectory over sixty years, many of the works show Redstone’s continued and evolving interest in challenging perceptions incorporating illusory elements and trompe l’oeil. In her Portals series, for example, Redstone uses primary colours and right angles, formal parameters that generate a sense of spatial depth and movement, transforming simple geometric shapes into vibratory visual narratives.

Working between nature and the built environment throughout her career, more recently Redstone has also worked on public sculptural commissions, employing light as a subject and material, alongside weighty, earthy stone and metal.

In keeping with CLOSE gallery’s dedication to showcasing women artists and those who have been neglected by art history, this exhibition marks a pivotal moment in Redstone’s astonishing career and presents a unique opportunity to rediscover works that have until now not received the recognition they duly deserve.

Artist Suzanne Blank Redstone: “My practice is concerned with interrupting the available light that surrounds us, creating environments that attract, catch and release light to produce a changing visual experience.”