First solo Noguchi show in Manhattan since 2004 includes wide range of works (photo courtesy of Pace Gallery)
Who: Isamu Noguchi
What: “Isamu Noguchi: Variations”
Where: Pace Gallery, 508-510 West Twenty-Fifth St. between Tenth & Eleventh Aves., 212-989-4258
When: Tuesday – Saturday through March 21, free, 10:00 am – 6:00 pm
Why: Usually you have to go to Long Island City to see an extensive survey of the work of L.A.-born Japanese-American artist Isamu Noguchi, who built his own museum and garden in Queens in 1985. But for the first time in more than a decade, you can take in a major solo Noguchi show in Manhattan, as “Isamu Noguchi: Variations” continues at two side-by-side Pace galleries in Chelsea through March 21. “Growth can only be new, for awareness is the ever-changing adjustment of the human psyche to chaos,” Noguchi said in his artist statement for the 1946 MoMA exhibition “Fourteen Americans,” continuing, “If I say that growth is the constant transfusion of human meaning into the encroaching void, then how great is our need today when our knowledge of the universe has filled space with energy, driving us toward a greater chaos and new equilibriums. I say it is the sculptor who orders and animates space, gives it meaning.” It is a thrill to see dozens of works, from sculpture (in various materials) and set designs to furniture and paper lanterns in addition to abstract gouaches, laid out in a whole new way in this space, with exciting juxtapositions and calming paths bringing new personal meanings.