Untitled (White/Black Inner Band Beveled)

Mary Corse’s nearly six-decade long practice has been devoted to the perceptual qualities of light and the dynamic physical and visual interplay between the viewer and the painting. Mary Corse created her first glass microsphere paintings in 1968. By layering the microspheres over visible and expressive brush strokes in monochrome white paint, Corse created works that both capture and refract light, seeming to shift, move, or internally glow.

Untitled (White/Black Inner Band Beveled) , 2014 is one of the first works in the Black Band series, which Corse first began in 2014 and continues today. In these works, a matte black acrylic band of black at varying widths is painted between two fields of white microspheres filled with Corse’s evident brushstrokes. These works play with the viewer’s perception of distance - at times, the black band seems to float in front of the white microsphered fields, while from other viewpoints it seems to recede into the background of the composition.