LINDA FLEMING | And Yet

“’And Yet’ conjures up a door opening to another possibility…in the midst of a body of work…in the face of a world in turmoil. It is a persistent thought that finds a place to slide into the main event.  These naked stainless steel wall sculptures foreground the warmth and physicality of a material generally perceived to be cold and anonymous. They form drawings combining implied dimension along with actual dimension that evoke more space than is given. The choice to have no color on the surface allows the subtle reflection of the environment to appear while encouraging the steel to reveal its nuance. ‘And Yet,’ the large Nu pastel drawings depend on color and the motion of the body for their existence. These ways of being live simultaneously.

My works are my best attempt to use the physical arena to try out my perceptual observations. Always waiting to be let in on the secret of existence, I realized that I had to find it myself bit by bit over a lifetime. Making has allowed me to follow these questions to ever more elaborate questions and out onto limbs that force me back to the main trunk of the tree, pulled by the hope of seeing deeper into the nature of being.

                My most recent works project the sense of having never had another history but their own. They allow multiple focus points to create a shifting concentration of form and color that unfolds through the viewer’s changing position.

For me these varied works depend on each other to complete the complexity of my investigation. Nothing exists except in relation to something else as stated in quantum physics. All of these works equally explore physicality and existence. All are ways of being; places to dwell. Each thing is an invitation to the next idea, and the trail of forms define an accumulated vision without beginning or end that is brought into being by listening to those quiet, simple first questions… what… why… how.

We are not just who we become, but everything we ever were.”

• Linda Fleming

Following the 2024 installation of her impressive nineteen-foot-tall, tour de force outdoor sculpture entitled Wayfinding on the island of Oahu, Robischon Gallery is pleased to present “And Yet,” Linda Fleming’s return for a fifth solo exhibition. Known for her dynamic, free-standing, large-scale outdoor works and evanescent, light-responsive, chromed or painted wall sculptures, Fleming’s distinct visual language and extensive study of the natural world continues to unfold with each new exploration of form, surface, and color. Fleming continually hones her language of complex rectilinear and curvilinear sculpture and works on paper that offer equal consideration to the potentialities of the ephemeral and the fluidly architectonic.

Eagerly recontextualizing her materials, Fleming debuts a new wall sculpture series made from what the artist refers to as “naked satin” stainless steel. Possessing the same exacting and circuitous presence of her earlier chrome or painted sculptures, the new work has a subtlety of surface that, while still transformational in the presence of light, offers a softly sueded, tonal sophistication. In contrast to her highly reflective surfaces, the nuanced surface offers an opportunity for contemplation even as the formal elements remain actively complex.

 The artist’s large geometric drawings on view dynamically weave composition and palette with a free-handed yet precise mark-marking acuity – a distinctly different material handling in contrast to the precise edges of the wall sculpture. Fleming’s exacting drawing practice, in fact, informs all of her work from intimate foundational study drawings to meticulously hand-cut, two and three-dimensional maquettes which often are the genesis for her larger sculptures. The artist regards the cut-paper works not so much as models, but rather, as the embodiment of idea into form.

At once cosmologic and earth-bound, Linda Fleming’s current artwork on view follows her recent massive retrospective exhibition, “Experimenta de Vacuo Spatio,” at the Kaneko art center. As a seasoned artist, selections of Fleming’s work from the 1960s to the present day made their mark both then and now to reaffirm and distinguish her standing as a formidable voice in contemporary art.  

Linda Fleming attended the San Francisco Art Institute and Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh. She was a professor at California College of the Arts from 1986 to 2017 and held the position of Sculpture Department Chair from 1988 to 2000, additionally receiving the Distinguished Faculty Award in 1993. Fleming has also received numerous prestigious recognitions, most recently the Pollock-Krasner Foundation Grant in 2023. Other awards include the Outstanding Educator Award from the International Sculpture Center and recognitions from Peter S. Reed Foundation, Adolph & Ester Gottlieb Foundation, and the Pollock-Krasner Foundation. Her work is in the permanent collections of Santa Clara University, the Berkeley Art Museum, Laumeier Sculpture Park, Oakland Museum of California, University of Wyoming, Stanford University Museum, and Albuquerque Museum, along with additional collections both public and private. Noteworthy exhibitions include Fleming’s “Confluence,” exhibited at the University of Colorado, Colorado Springs, and “Making Places,” exhibited at the Center for Contemporary Arts, Santa Fe, as well as her touring exhibition showcasing the artist’s extensive and intricate maquette series entitled, “Linda Fleming: Modeling the Universe” originating at the Nevada Art Museum and “Drawn To/Drawn From: A 45 Year Survey” at Oats Park Art Center, Fallon, Nevada; “Glimmer,” a site-specific sculpture for the Oakland Museum of Art, exhibited in the OMCA’s iconic sculpture gardens; and Robischon Gallery’s 2016 exhibition “DECLARATION,” in which Fleming’s work was exhibited alongside other historically-important and esteemed artists: Louise Bourgeois, Ruth Bernhard, Helen Frankenthaler, Ann Hamilton, Jae Ko, Yayoi Kusama, Joan Mitchell, Alice Neel, Shirin Neshat, Judy Pfaff, Lorna Simpson, Mickalene Thomas, and Kara Walker.