Susan York is known for reductive work in graphite and porcelain. Her cast and drawn forms engage with the particularities of architectural space, combining precise geometry with asymmetry and tension.
York’s site-sensitive installations engage the existing architecture of a chosen site: a room, a wall, or a piece of paper. Her studies in graphite are a homage to subtlety, with irregularities interrupting otherwise austere geometric forms and producing results that are more felt than seen. Lucy Lippard describes, “This nuanced fusion of the intellect and sensual experience is precisely what York achieves. In doing so, she takes Minimalism past the post, and into a realm of her own”.
York’s influences stem from a number of sources, including her friendship with mentor Agnes Martin, the Dutch De Stijl movement, and the effects of working in the expansive desert landscape of the American Southwest. Her primary questions are rooted in the transitions between two and three dimensions. She explores what happens when one state becomes another, asking how solid form can be taken apart and rendered flat, and investigating how a flat shape can be made three dimensional. Her work initiates an immersive experience, allowing objects to dematerialize into the space that surrounds them, challenging unconscious perceptions of form and space.
A 2024 Guggenheim Fellow, York’s work can be found in numerous public and private collections in the US and abroad, including: British Museum, London, UK; The Brooklyn Museum, New York; The Morgan Library & Museum, New York; Museum für Konkrete Kunst, Ingolstadt, Germany; New Mexico Museum of Art; The Panza Collection, Switzerland; and Kunst Museum Winterthur, Switzerland. She is the recipient of a Joan Mitchell Foundation Fellowship and an Adolph & Esther Gottlieb Foundation Award.