The current iteration of the Nasher Sculpture Center’s ongoing
Sightings series of installations and architectural interventions by contemporary artists features a new installation by London-based artist Eva Rothschild. Born in Dublin in 1971, Rothschild has received acclaim for works that reshape the legacy of minimalist and post-minimalist sculpture to offer evocative, open-ended experiences to the viewer. In 2011, she created
Empire for the Public Art Fund, New York, placing a monumental, multidirectional archway out of steel painted with brightly colored stripes at one of the entries to Central Park.
For
Sightings, Rothschild drew on experience from both previous commissions to create
Why Don’t You (Dallas), expanding the formal vocabulary of
Empire to the scale of
Cold Corners. An intricate network of painted piping rambles through the space of the Nasher’s Entrance Bay, snaking up the walls, along the floor, and over and around admissions desks, stairs, and doorways. Like the Duveens Commission, it cannot be understood at a glance. Climbing over the admission desk, dipping down to the Lower Level, and wrapping underneath the bridge over the stairs, the work encourages movement through the space and can only be taken in gradually, as one follows the trail of black and brightly colored striped pipes through the space.
Empire alternated black with stripes of complementary colors red and green, creating a tonal stasis that; counteracted the movement of the pipes. The brightly colored stripes of
Why Don’t You (Dallas) are grouped so that, as the work travels through the space, each section is identified by its color. These shift gradually in sections and run from cool to warm as it travels from one end of the space to the other.
Rothschild has exhibited widely at museums, including Hepworth Wakefield and Tate Britain. Her work is included in the collections of Tate London, the Carnegie Museum, Pittsburgh, and the Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin.