Published by Walther König, Köln. Edited by Yesomi Umolu, Chris Bayley. Text by Barbara Chase-Riboud, Gus Casely Hayford, Erin L. Thompson, Joseph Manca, Yesomi Umolu, Lynette Yiadom-Boakye. Interview by Hans Ulrich Obrist.
With a career spanning over seven decades, Philadelphia-born, Paris-based sculptor Barbara Chase-Riboud (born 1939) has long been an innovator in sculptural composition. Her materiality is characterized by the interplay between folds of cast bronze or aluminum and skeins of wool and silk which are knotted, braided, looped and woven. Pitting opposing qualities against one another—hard and soft, light against heavy and tactile versus rigid—the artist’s iconic monumental sculptures explore, in her own words, “reversing and upsetting the established order and the hierarchy of parts as only a true revolutionary does.” At an encyclopedic exhibition at the Serpentine Gallery, these pieces feature alongside never-before-seen early bronze casts, in addition to new work created less than a year before the exhibition. The book features an illustrated chronology as well as a selection of the artist’s poetry and writing.
