Untitled (White Grid, Horizontal Strokes), 1969

Glass microspheres and acrylic on canvas
©  Mary Corse; courtesy Pace Gallery. Photo by Ian Reeves.

Light is the primary medium in Mary Corse’s large, monochromatic paintings. Often associated with the Light and Space artists of Southern California—who, beginning in the early 1960s, explored how the physical qualities of light could affect the viewer’s environment—Corse was one of the first to incorporate electric light into her work. Since the mid-1960s, the artist has experimented with materials such as neon tubing and retroreflective beads, or microspheres. She is interested in the relationship between materiality and perception, and her techniques capture and project light in order to create an ethereal and shifting presence, which exists beyond the surface of the painting. Untitled (White Grid, Horizontal Strokes) is the second work in the artist’s ongoing White Light series, begun in 1968. This influential body of work, emphasizing the artist’s hand while incorporating the grid as an anchoring structure, has dominated Corse’s practice over the past five decades and represents the majority of her output to date.