Carol Bove - by Katherine Brinson (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

Each copy of this two-volume overview of Bove's work is made unique through a different diamond-shaped paper element hand-cut by the artist.

Accompanying the first museum survey of Carol Bove's multidisciplinary work, this two-volume catalog traces pivotal shifts across the artist's 25-year career, ranging from her fugitive early drawings to her compositions of scrap metal and manipulated steel tubing known as "collage sculptures." Bove's inventive work spans many mediums and formal approaches but is unified by an exacting play of material, scale, color and space. She places these elements in dialogue with cultural histories to create the conditions for a resonant perceptual encounter.
The publication is housed in a die-cut slipcase inspired by Bove's distinctive use of geometry and color. For the first edition, these cases feature paper ephemera elements the artist has personally selected and hand cut into diamond shapes, making each copy a unique object. Contained within are two books that offer complementary but autonomous perspectives on Bove's ever-evolving body of work. The first contextualizes her practice across seven generously illustrated scholarly essays, accompanied by an extensive selected exhibition history and bibliography. The second, an artist's book conceived by Bove, features immersive photographic details of her works printed at the precise scale of the objects they represent, interleaved with a series of recent paper collages. Together, the two volumes present the first comprehensive survey of Bove's career in the form of a book-object, realized in tandem with the most expansive presentation of the artist's work to date.
The work of Geneva-born American artist Carol Bove (born 1971) spans sculpture, drawing, collage, painting and installation. Bove has been the subject of solo exhibitions at the Kunstverein in Hamburg (2003); Blanton Museum of Art, Austin (2006); Museum of Modern Art, New York (2013-14); Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (2021); and Nasher Sculpture Center, Dallas (2021), among others.

Review Quotes

We think we know steel: the tough, brawny skeleton of the modern world. But Bove gives it a broader repertoire of identities, crushing and stretching it until metal takes on the suppleness of flesh or the drape of silk. It's more than a trick; it's a statement. She challenges us to perceive the world more flexibly, to defy the rigidity of categories.--Ariella Budick "The Financial Times"

[Carol Bove] extracts something new from steel, dispelling its aura of brawn. Her signature form is a rumpled ribbon of metal painted to look as soft as suede.--Deborah Solomon "The New York Times"

[If] there's a narrative embedded in Bove's bent-steel sculptures between the rusty castoffs of yesteryear's infrastructure and today's high-gloss artificial perfection, it's her great accomplishment of having made the stakes of that story simultaneously clear, yet wholly unresolved.--Gordon Hughes "Artforum"

Carol Bove's new mid-career retrospective at the Guggenheim inspired jealousy from curators and museum directors, masterfully balancing the popularity of her recent work against her more conceptual early work.--Marion Maneker "Puck"

It's wondrous that Bove has taken material used in the construction of buildings, firearms, and bridges and made it feel like a piece of fabric nonchalantly deposited and forgotten.--Seph Rodney "Hyperallergic"

Sure to become this year's coffee table must-have.--Monica Khemsurov "Sight Unseen"

Using not just steel but a wide array of materials, including driftwood, peacock feathers, and stone, Bove has long put perception at the heart of her artistic practice: What do we notice, and what do we overlook?--Grace Edquist "Vogue"