Afloat in space as if in thrall to interplanetary forces, suspended by (nearly) invisible filaments, the nineteen wire sculptures that comprise the exhibition Galacticonexus inevitably prompt thoughts about cosmic systems, a comparison encouraged by its star-trekking portmanteau title. The installation enhances that simulation, pulling us almost physically into what feels like a gravitational field of mini-worlds held in position by unseen forces. These intermittently glittering, intricately woven and twisted configurations have also been likened to tumbleweed and other more earthbound phenomena—from biodiverse botanicals to the human body. Such associations, however, are provisional, countered by the work’s insistent materiality.
They are—or should be—instantly recognizable as the work of the pioneering post-minimalist artist Alan Saret, best known for his transformative use of ordinary wire. In his hands, it becomes an expressive material for making sculpture, as it is in the hands of Alexander Calder and Ruth Asawa, all high-wire acts that are hard to beat. This survey spanning nearly six decades focused on the artist’s hanging wire sculptures, whose ephemerality and anti-monumentality were both praised and dismissed when first shown in the late 1960s. At odds with the adamant forms of Richard Serra and Donald Judd, Saret’s groundbreaking works helped upend the reigning aesthetic of that time.
Taking full advantage of wire’s malleable properties, and viewable from a 360-degree angle, Saret’s elaborate constructs—often called drawings in space—are so buoyant that they seem to breathe in response to imperceptible air currents. Moreover, their shadows thrown against the walls double the presence of each sculpture and ask us to consider the nature of the actual and the illusory in a kind of Plato’s Cave dialogue.
Saret clearly has a longstanding fascination with the interaction between chaos, order, and chance. Left to their own devices, some works seem to unravel at a certain point like Darling Daughter (1984/2023); others, such as Living Waters (1999) are taut, impenetrable, each resolution negotiated in a kind of internal argument. Stacking opposites against each other—the rational against the intuitive; the determined against the fortuitous; geometry against the expressive; color against the colorless; pragmatic materiality and process against the intuitive and spiritual— even their form is contested. Seemingly of utmost fragility, they are far tougher than they look.
Two To Ten Rising (2025), the artist’s most recent work, is given marquee billing—and it is a beauty. Under a skylight, situated alone against a white wall lit by an uncanny glow, the approximately 19-foot cascade of delicate steel wire appears to be mist from a distance. The work, however, was generated by “Number Stuff”—a system of numeric logic Saret devised to translate mathematical sequences into physical form. Whether inspired by art, science, math or mantras, there is poetry of all kinds here to bewitch you.
Alan Saret: Galacticonexus was on view at Karma, New York from July 24 to September 14, 2025.