Mary Corse

Throughout her fifty-year career, Mary Corse has embraced unconventional approaches to art making, all in the pursuit of capturing the perceptual qualities of light. Plexiglas, fluorescent lights, argon-filled tubes, ceramic tiles, and glass microspheres (an industrial material used in street signs and highway paint) all found their way into her practice as a means of integrating light into the works themselves, as opposed to merely representing it. The use of prismatic microspheres, combined with acrylic paint, has allowed the artist to develop her distinctive series of luminescent works that capture and refract light, shifting in appearance as viewers move throughout the space. These masterful strategies place Corse’s work in the realm of a physical rather than a purely visual experience, heightening our sense of consciousness and awareness. 

Corse’s work is featured in many celebrated permanent collections, including that of the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York; J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles; Dia Art Foundation, New York; The Menil Collection, Houston; and National Gallery of Art, Washington DC.