Frozen Gestures traces the exploration of expressive movement in sculpture from Abstract Expressionism to the present. The exhibition takes its title from a term used to describe the moment when Lynda Benglis’ pours of pigmented latex, spilled directly onto the floor, solidified into their final form. Created in the late 1960s, these works marked a pivotal shift in contemporary art by blurring the boundaries between painting and sculpture. For Benglis, the phrase “frozen gesture” refers not only to a physical process but also to a psychological or emotional act, as in the expression “it was a lovely gesture.”

By the early 1990s, Frank Stella similarly sought to create a painterly “frozen gesture” that could be formed instantaneously without evidence of the artist’s hand. He achieved this through processes such as pouring molten metal into sand molds and employing emerging digital technologies, including 3D printing to generate fluid forms that evoke the sweeping brushstrokes of the Abstract Expressionists.

This exhibition is as much about painting as it is about sculpture. Approaching sculpture from the perspective of painting liberated these artists from many of the traditional concerns of sculpture, including weight, mass, and support, that preoccupied Minimalists such as Robert Morris and Donald Judd during the 1960s. Working with literal, three-dimensional space also offered a solution to one of modernist painting’s primary dilemmas: how to eliminate illusionistic pictorial space without sacrificing the optical marvels that make painting so compelling. Painting had another limitation as well: it is physically static.While painting can suggest movement and gesture, sculpture has the capacity to activate space through its physical presence.