Since the 1950s, Frank Stella’s practice has consistently explored the boundaries of visual language, pushing the two-dimensional into three, monochrome into color, square into round, painting into sculpture and beyond. In Stella’s Star series, sculpture and architecture blend into grandiose forms that both occupy and shape space on a lofty scale, posing aesthetic questions about mass, composition and spatial relationships. Indeed, suggesting the swirling cosmos and celestial bursts, these works move past the rich historical, musical and geographical references of Stella’s oeuvre into the realm of the universe itself.

A culmination of Stella’s explorations over the past decades, stripped to their bare essence and then inflated, the Star series thus presents a compelling continuation as much as an experimental departure; this exemplary characteristic can be applied to Stella’s overarching creative approach and the artist’s commitment to building upon his own aesthetic challenges and resolutions.

© 2021 Frank Stella / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York.