There Is Nothing Simple About the Bourse de Commerce Show on Minimalism

A curious garden has sprouted under the glass dome in the Bourse de Commerce, Pinault Collection.

For its new “Minimal” exhibition, five large, geometric forms by the 81-year-old artist Meg Webster, each made from a single natural material, sit spaced apart in the building’s central nucleus. Sculpted as though made from giant sand-toy molds, there’s a low, smooth mound of yellow ochre clay in a perfect circle; an arc-shaped wall of pungent, textured beeswax; an open, walk-in wreath of fragrant, mixed foliage; a bulbous half-sphere of cracking Mars-red soil; and a giant, shimmering cone of salt crystals pointing upward at the rotunda. On closer inspection, their sharp edges and sleek surfaces appear fragile, held together lightly. Dig your finger in—as is tempting to do—and they would deliciously crumble.

Conceived from 1988 to 2025 and made of locally sourced materials, these works are the exhibition’s centerpieces. Curated by Jessica Morgan, “Minimal” traces the global evolution of Minimalist practices since the 1960s, highlighting how artists across Asia, Europe, and the Americas challenged traditional display and compositional conventions.

With an economy of means and pared-down aesthetics, these creators invited viewers into a more direct, bodily engagement with the work, integrating space, material, and perception. From Japan’s Mono-ha and Brazil’s Neo-Concretism to Europe’s Zero and Arte Povera movements, and the U.S. Minimalists, the exhibition shows how geographically diverse approaches shared a common drive: to rethink the relationship between artwork, audience, and environment, expanding Minimalism beyond an American-dominated narrative.

For Webster, her works inspire a return to an imagined, primal state of things. They also question our relationship with the Earth. With titles like (1988) and (1990), they share a common quest for something essential, sensual, and ultimately profound.

But the term “minimal” can be confusing. “Initially, the word ‘minimal’ was negative,” Morgan told me. While that perception has changed, even today, with figurative art making a comeback, some still bristle at the mention of the Bourse’s focus on minimalist art. Some see it as too stark, too non-narrative. Yet even Minimalist skeptics would do well to give Morgan’s vision a closer look. The Dia director is expanding whatever limited views surround these practices, maximizing them to include a variety of forms, geographies, and artists whose works resonate today.

Maximalist Minimalism

The show is organized loosely by themes: Light, Mono-ha, Balance, Surface, Grid, Monochrome, and Materialism. More than 100 artworks by over 50 creators are often accompanied by sound pieces. Previously unsung artists of color, creatives from outside the U.S., and women are brought into the canon. They include Webster, who was taught by Richard Serra and Donald Judd. There is also work by Senga Nengudi, Merrill Wagner, long overshadowed by her husband, Robert Ryman, as well as Mary Corse, Michelle Stuart, Jackie Winsor, and Chryssa, among others.

Though not a cohesive, global movement due to differing geographic contexts, these creators tended to experiment with objects taken off the wall and placed directly on the floor, without pedestals. They sometimes left gestural marks with their hands or experimented with multiple mixed colors or monochrome. Many were obsessive about intricate detail. They also looked closely at the edges of things—the thin line where a form begins to emerge or slips back into nothingness, depending on a person’s perspective, the light, even the air in the room. The artists dug at the core of what an art object might be and why it can resonate with the slightest formal adjustment. To experience these nuances, the works must be seen in person, away from—and perhaps as a counteraction to—the chaotic frenzy of daily life.

“Minimal is a way to make something so essential and simple, but with material and form … that embraces your experience in a non-contact way. It doesn’t talk to you. It talks to many things and allows you to almost be non-verbal,” said Webster, 81, at the show opening. Her pieces encourage visitors to move in and around them, much like a garden landscape. It’s possible to stop and smell a work or explore the interior of another.

Nancy Holt’s captivating (1972) also depends on our bodily presence. The work uses four differently angled steel pipes, each pointing to a black dot on the wall—three ellipses and one circle. Slight movements while looking through the pipes reveal a thin slit of light forming a circumference around a black void. The circle flickers in and out depending on the viewer’s stillness.

Lygia Pape, the Brazilian artist who lived from 1927 to 2004 and a key figure in Neo-Concretism, has her own dedicated exhibition space. It includes performance art videos, a paper cut-out creation myth in solid geometric colors, woodcut prints, and her famous threaded filament installations. One installation, made of transparent, parallel strings woven in a corner like a spiderweb, is almost invisible. It emerges only when you move, and reflected light travels along the tightly strung threads. In another room, there is a monumental version of this same series. Parallel ribbons of golden, copper wires stretch from floor to ceiling, traversing the gallery like beams of light breaking through storm clouds. Spot-lit in parts, they appear and disappear, floating in midair depending on where you stand.

To many of these artists, “encouraging you to train yourself to look with a greater sense of critical perception” was a political act, one that could extend to the world around them, explained Morgan, who hopes to revive that lost reading. It’s a compelling argument for an age when careful, slow examination can seem almost foreign. Perhaps it is time to exercise it.

Source: Exhibition - news.artnet.com