A conversation between Larry Bell and Graham Steele

LB: I wish I could give you an articulate response to that. But the piece in this basement studio I had—I didn’t know where I was going and I didn’t know where I was coming from either. So that’s the perfect place to be. What came out was just the intuitive response to an inner challenge and that’s the image of it. GS: Totally! I think what’s interesting though, Larry, is that you know in that intuitive moment you tap into something that you continue to tap into for 70 years. I think that’s why it’s so exciting to see this piece, and in a way, why it’s surprising that the piece has really never been shown before. So it’s an exciting thing to see that. LB: I hope I’m not all embarrassed by it all. I just looked at the images that were photographed of the drawings in that folder from school and some of those are really interesting—the diagrams of the squares. And then there’s also a series of sketches that must have been something I was thinking about for the patterns on the cubes with the original elliptical cubes—there are sketches for those things, they are kind of very technical drawings. GS: Let’s talk about Hydrolux because everyone was excited about seeing this piece in Miami, and this is where the curators from Unlimited saw the piece and immediately became very excited. Can you tell me about the context in which you made this piece? One of the things that I find really interesting about that work was that it became the most photographed work in your show in Miami, and there was something about the idea of surveillance and of you being implicated in the work that was very prescient. Talk to me about what was happening in 1980 and where this piece came from.

LB: Well I was very intrigued by something I saw when I was doing an installation of a piece called the Iceberg at M.I.T. I met a fellow named Harold Edgerton, who was a professor there, who invented the strobe light. In his studio at the school, where I was treated to a visit, he came in and turned on the light and then he turned on a faucet. The water, instead of coming out of the hydrant and going into the drain, came out of the drain and was going into the faucet. It was absolutely stunning and baffling to see such a thing. So I finally figured out how he did it. And then I went to try and make some kind of a display, a sculptural display, which included that improbable activity and I was going to call that The Improbable Flow. I worked on several kinds of possible commissions—one was for the IBM Building on 56th and Madison, because I was selected to put in an idea for that. And we made a maquette of a sculpture piece that was supposed to sit out just south of the entrance of the building and water appeared to be running backwards on the threading board. It was a big triangular wedge, 18 feet tall. The water would cascade down from the top to the bottom, but it would appear that the water was going from the bottom up to the top. So we made that model, and I was really impressed with how well it performed and decided to carry on playing around with light and water. There was very little money to experiment with these kinds of things, other than just in a small way with garden hoses and sprinkler nozzles and stuff like that. And we built a strobe light where we could pulse the water and make it do strange things. In the studio, we built a lot of components that could be used and improvised to disperse the water. In other words, a manifold that would drop the water and a tank that would catch the water. And then lights and things like that and video projections into the water that were interesting…

GS: Why video, Larry? Because so much of what surprised people was this really prescient use of video and this idea of surveillance. The fact that there is a sense of discovery as you realize the shimmering video on one side is actually your projection behind you, doubled and tripled. LB: Well it’s quite simple. I wanted everything about the piece to be improbable. In Miami where the viewer was seeing three different times—looking at the piece in the shadow of the viewer was projected back onto the water. I love the improbability of the whole thing. And a fantastic thing happened in that room at the ICA—the air became ionized because of the falling water. And so it felt really great to be in the presence of that. The water and the ionization of the water charmed the viewers. And then the visuals of the piece added to the charm of it. And a lot of the stuff that happened was improbable. I didn’t plan it. It just happened. And that’s the story of my life —just letting things happen and enjoying the possibility that anything can happen, anytime. GS: What came first, was it Hydrolux or was it The Improbable Flow? Because obviously there are relationships between them. LB: The Improbable Flow actually came first, however the whole series was called Hydrolux: Light and Water. So The Improbable Flow was part of Hydrolux, the concept. It was an aspect of Hydrolux where the water went backwards. GS: Does the piece you are showing in Basel have the strobe light? LB: I don’t know. What we ended up with was a surprise. I love the way it all looked. Plus, I could feel that ionization in the air. I wasn’t expecting that. I really never had such a successful shower stream. What came out was something completely different, but still a pure form of Hydrolux. GS: It’s exciting for people to know that the Hydrolux series opens up. – Works by Larry Bell are featured in Hauser & Wirth’s presentation at Art Basel Unlimited, from 13 – 16 June 2019.