Susan York is primarily known for reductive work in graphite and ceramics. Her cast and drawn forms are often installed to engage with the architecture of a particular space, combining precise geometry with unexpected elements of asymmetry and tension.
Her site-sensitive installations engage the existing architecture of a chosen site: a room, a wall, or a piece of paper. York’s studies in graphite are a homage to subtlety, with irregularities interrupting otherwise austere geometric forms and producing results that are perhaps more felt than seen. In the exhibition catalogue, Susan York: 3 Columns, Lucy Lippard wrote, “This nuanced fusion of the intellect and sensual experience is precisely what York achieves. In doing so, she takes Minimalism past the post, and into a realm of her own”.
York’s influences include her friendship with mentor Agnes Martin, the Dutch De Stijl movement and the effects of working in the expansive desert landscape of the American Southwest. Her primary questions are rooted in the “transition between 2D and 3D: When does one state become the other? How do I “take apart” a solid form and render it flat? How do I take a flat shape and make it 3-dimensional?” The work is intended to provide an immersive experience, allowing the object to de-materialize into the space that surrounds it, and thereby challenging unconscious perceptions of form and space.
Susan York earned her Master of Fine Arts degree from Cranbrook Academy of Art in Bloomfield Hills, MI. She currently lives and works in Santa Fe, NM. The artist's work can be found in numerous public and foundation collections in the US and abroad, including: The British Museum, London, UK, Brooklyn Museum, NY; Bronx Museum of Arts, NY; Lannan Foundation, TX and NM; Maxine & Stuart Frankel Foundation for Art, MI; Museum für Konkrete Kunst, Germany; New Mexico Museum of Art, NM; The Panza Collection, Switzerland and Kunst Museum Winterthur, Winterthur, Switzerland.