Katie Bell's ARENA reviewed by David Everitt Howe for Art in America.
"There’s a rich history of scatter pieces in Post-Minimalist art, starting around 1967 when Robert Morris, Richard Serra, and Barry Le Va started flinging around chunky felt, dirt, steel, broken glass, and—in a famed piece by Le Va, Four (Cleaved Floor), 1969—cleavers. The controlled chaos of these works and the often brutish industrial objects they employ imparts a vague sense of danger, which contributes to the notion that Post-Minimalism was something of a boy’s club, and the artists’ actions a release of hypermasculine energy. Katie Bell’s exhibition “ARENA” at Spencer Brownstone flips this machismo on its head. Known for sprawling, almost architectural environments, Bell has constructed an epic installation of strewn objects—some found, others she fabricated—that reference architecture and design, such as a Corian countertop, pieces of wood veneer, chunks of a hot tub found at a city dump, and a marble tabletop. "
Read the full article here.