By Benjamin Genocchio for The New York Times “Tremendous World” is the apt title of Lesley Dill’s exhibition now at the Neuberger Museum of Art, where extremely large, dramatic works cover the walls of the gallery, some of them up to 60 feet long and 20 feet high. The show is not a retrospective, but…
New York-based artist Lesley Dill, whose work is on display at Arthur Roger Gallery through Saturday, is largely responsible for one of the most popular trends in sculpture. Whenever you see ghostly objects made from ephemeral materials such as sheer cloth, papier-mache and dangling ribbons and threads, think of Dill.
Lesley Dill’s Radiance illustrates her fondness for mantra meditation in which words are repeated, for different words keep showing up on repeated viewings.
Leslie Dill is known for her unusual combinations of word and image, body and text, performance and poetry. She is not alone in undertaking such investigations, but her handling of these questions is unusually skillful. The practice of mixing word and image remains something which is often done clumsily at best and which tends to be, not always unreasonably, dismissed.
Language as an instrument of perfect paradox, a medium of both exposure and concealment, has been Lesley Dill’s subject for many years. This exhibition included work both more physically condensed and more ethereal than she has shown before.