Cube #28 2008

Larry Bell made this glass cube, one of many, using a process of coating glass to play with light and space. The monochrome palette of blacks and grays feels so precise, like something generated by a computer, but it's all in the layering, the touch. There's something eerie about the surface; it's so slick, so reflective. You could say the cube is like a mirror, and it is, but it's a mirror into a different dimension. Look closely at how the light shifts across the planes. Is it a trick of the eye or is the cube actually dissolving at the edges? The subtle gradations are like a Rothko painting, all about feeling, even though it’s glass, not pigment. Bell's cubes remind me of some of Robert Irwin's scrim works, where the whole room becomes part of the art. It makes you question what is solid and what is just an illusion. Art is like that, isn’t it?