Post-abstraction

Barbara Kasten's light-based photography, sculpture, and installation work exploring abstraction, geometry, and the relationships between object, space, and color.

Why go

This is Kasten's first major European retrospective, spanning six decades and returning to Poland where a 1970s fellowship with Magdalena Abakanowicz's tapestry studio proved formative to her practice. The show traces how her early sculptural experiments with yarn evolved into her signature approach of constructing images through light, reflection,

What to expect

One hundred works across photography, sculpture, and installation, arranged thematically rather than chronologically, plus an artist intervention in the gallery's stairway. Expect staged compositions of mirrors, steel rods, grids, and geometric solids lit to reveal how light and reflection transform space.

Things to know

• First extensive exhibition of Kasten's work in Central/Eastern Europe.
• Kasten studied at Magdalena Abakanowicz's tapestry studio in Poznań in the early 1970s, a watershed moment that shaped her entire practice.
• Her early Polish sculptures were her last; she pivoted to photography upon returning to the U.S.
• Works span six decades, from 1970s sisal sculptures to current practice.
• Kasten builds her own arrangements in studio and outdoors, using light and reflection to construct images without digital tools.
• The title 'Post-abstraction' signals her dialogue with constructivism, modernism, and post-modernist architecture.