“I like the idea of improbable things,” Larry Bell once remarked, as if to summarize the relentless pursuit of new forms that has defined his six-decade career. Inventing his own materials even as he wields them, Bell has developed a singular method, adapting industrial techniques to achieve luminous works of art. Improvisations spans fifty years of his two- and three-dimensional practice, featuring glass sculptures – from tabletop constructions to large, freestanding installations – and wall-mounted works in various media. The exhibition originated at the Phoenix Art Museum, traveled to San Antonio, and concludes its tour in New Mexico, where the artist has lived and worked since 1973.

Bell emerged in the 1960s in tandem with the West Coast brand of Minimalism known as Light and Space, and quickly became one of the most renowned abstract artists of his generation. Glass has long been his signature medium – a conduit for light. Bell’s transparent panes attain stunning chromatic variation through his unique process for treating glass: coating it with thin films of vaporized metals inside a vacuum chamber known as “The Tank.” That alchemy extends to his collages and works on paper that generate prismatic effects, harnessing optical phenomena to color how we think and feel. Bell’s slick cubes show no traces of human touch yet stem from his hands-on experiments – a manual process of trial and error that is as intuitive as it is personal. Improvisations highlights that element of surprise in Bell’s work and the wonder it induces: “In my opinion all artwork is stored energy,” he has said, unlocked by the viewer’s embodied response.