Ortuzar is pleased to present Through Dusk, a group exhibition featuring works by Lee Bontecou, Claire Falkenstein, Yayoi Kusama, Agnes Martin, Yoko Ono, and Mira Schendel. Created between the late 1950s and the early 1970s, the works reflect a shared pursuit among these artists: to give form to the invisible, at a moment defined by the atomic age, the Space Race, and a popular imaginary enamored with the early exploration of outer space. Rather than depict the cosmos, each artist turned to abstraction, spatial configuration, language, and light as means of modeling unseen systems, from the subatomic to the spiritual. They capture both the anxieties of a world reckoning with nuclear possibility and the optimism of a generation newly attuned to the infinite.
Claire Falkenstein’s open structures of copper, brass, and wire—including Sun XIV (1958)—translate theories of space-time and energy into sculptural form. Suspended networks of interlacing metal arcs trace pathways through air, suggesting constellations, atoms, or biological networks. Her work encourages perceptual shifts: viewed from different angles, these lattices alternately appear weightless and dense, microcosmic and cosmic. Her interest in the imperceptibility of scale—the idea that structures of matter mirror one another from the molecular to the celestial—links her practice to contemporary scientific models of the period. Related paintings and works on paper extend these investigations in two dimensions, exploring the interplay of line, color, and organic systems.
Together, these six artists trace separate but related inquiries into the immaterial—bridging scientific discovery and spiritual reflection, anxiety and wonder. In an era once defined by nuclear uncertainty and the promise of space exploration—and again today, amid renewed anxieties and fascination with the cosmos—Through Dusk reflects on the fragile and often porous thresholds between inner vision and infinite space.
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