Call For Entries: Relief: Works Inspired by Louise Nevelson

Louise Nevelson’s early work focused on found objects and conceptual style, which took precedence over traditional aesthetic, technical, and material concerns. Usually created out of wood, her work appears puzzle-like, with multiple, intricately cut pieces placed into wall sculptures. A unique feature of her work is that her figures are often painted in monochromatic black or white.

In her most iconic works, she utilized wooden objects that she gathered from urban debris piles and carefully arranged the objects in order to historicize the debris within the new narrative context of her wall sculptures. Nevelson purposefully selected wooden objects for their evocative potential to call to mind the forms of the city, nature, and the celestial bodies. While the individual pieces had an intimate scale, they became monumental when viewed holistically within the combined environment of the assemblage.

Artists’ works for this call for entries should avoid imitation of Nevelson, but rather take inspiration from her conceptual aesthetic, carefully selected objects, minimal color palette, puzzle-like intricacies, and use of layering and sculptural style. Pieces need not be physical sculptures or three-dimensional assemblages but should imbue the sculptural feeling and aesthetic of Nevelson’s work, even within two-dimensional representations.