Alyson Shotz

[2][3][4] Writers suggest her work challenges tenets of monumental, minimalist sculpture—traditionally welded, solid, heavy and static—through its accumulation of common materials in constructions that are often flexible, translucent, reflective, seemingly weightless, and responsive to changing conditions and basic forces.

[17][9][23] Shotz's sculptures and installations manipulate ordinary synthetic materials—optical lenses, mirrors, glass, piano strings, wire, beads, nails—in concert with physical forces in order to investigate the shaping of perception, experiential boundaries, and ephemeral phenomena.

"[34] It included a digital photo of collaged budding flowers suggesting genetic engineering, a video, and Pink Swarm, one of two shimmering, suspended topiary- or cloud-like sculptures made of plastic, wire and clear surgical tubing.

[35] For the Whitney Museum show "Pastoral Pop" (2000), Shotz installed Mobile Flora, a grove of 9-foot-tall, slender stalks made of Q-tips coated in green rubber with casters replacing roots, that reviews characterized as "weird, plant-machine hybrids,"[31] "alien bamboo,"[36] and "genetically mutated lily pads and beanstalks.

"[16] In shows at Locks Gallery, SFMOMA (both 2008), Derek Eller and Warehouse Gallery (both 2009), Shotz exhibited related suspended and wall-based sculptures that resembled ghostly, floating chandeliers or iced-over molecular forms (Crystalline Structure, 2007); weightless, skeletal apparitions made of long, bowing strands of beaded piano wire (The Structure of Light, 2008; Equilibrium, 2009); and billowing webs created by looping thread around pins nailed to walls in complex, mathematically based networks of triangles ("Thread Drawings", 2008).

[20][7] Wave Equation (2010, Nasher Sculpture Center) and Invariant Interval (2013, University of Texas) were monumental, yet delicate constructions employing piano and steel wire filaments in skeletal ellipses or web-like forms; reviews described them as "gossamer" works moving between presence and absence, interior and exterior, and static mass and illusory motion.

[42][25][8] The installations Plane Weave (2016, Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Art) and Object for Reflection (2017/2020, Guggenheim Bilbao) were vertical, tapestry-like works made of thousands of octagonal pieces of perforated aluminum joined by steel rings, whose flexible, open construction dramatically slumped and folded while appearing both solid and transparent.

[8] In 2020, she exhibited the "Intricate Metamorphosis" works—intimate, corporeal ceiling-hung sculptures with iridescent, chain-mail-like surfaces made of small electroplated steel disks—and "Chronometer" series, which comprised rhythmic, wall-mounted abstractions like paintings composed of thousands of gleaming copper washers and nails, interrupted by snaking bands of recycled rubber bicycle inner tubes.

[1] New Yorker critic Johanna Fateman likened the former to "empty cocoons of some unknown species or, more fantastically, tails abandoned by mermaids," while suggesting the latter works embodied COVID-related themes of marking time and confronting mortality.

[1] In her 2023 exhibitions "Alloys of Moonlight" and "The Silent Constellations," Shotz explored space, energy, light and phenomenological experience through minimal, metallic mesh forms resembling Möbius strips and delicate rectangular and fan-like reliefs of hand-folded aluminum, respectively.

[52] Her glass mosaic work for the domed ceiling of the Fred D. Thompson Federal Courthouse in Nashville, The Robes of Justitia, was commissioned by the U.S. General Services Administration (GSA) and won the organization's 2022 Honor Award in Art.

Alyson Shotz, Object for Reflection , punched aluminum and stainless steel rings, 122.5" x 145" x 57", 2017. Guggenheim Museum Bilbao collection.
Alyson Shotz, Wave Equation , stainless steel wire, silvered glass beads and aluminum, 120" x 144" x 117", 2010, installation at the Nasher Sculpture Center. Indianapolis Museum of Art collection.
Alyson Shotz, Three Fold , welded aluminum frame, acrylic with dichroic lamination, 56' x 15' x 6', 2013. Permanent Installation, Stanford University Li Ka Shing Center for Learning and Knowledge.