Robert Indiana’s 2013 Whitney Museum retrospective aimed to look beyond his popular ‘LOVE’ logo to a career that examined the complexities of American life. In spring of this year, Kasmin Gallery’s focus on the late artist’s early career and Pace Gallery’s current career-spanning show again argue for Indiana’s importance as a Pop artist who probed darker aspects of U.S. history and identity. At the exhibition entrance, the words ‘USA’ and ‘FUN’ are joined by the word ‘APOGEE,’ which suggests that the first two words represent notions alien to each other. Elsewhere the words EAT and DIE are provocatively conjoined in one work while another bears the phrase ‘A divorced man has never been the president.’ When Indiana focused instead on numbers, as he does in this series of ten monumental sculptures installed on Pace Gallery’s terrace, the meaning derived from his own personal experience, as he considered each digit as a reference to important events and places in his own life. (On view in Chelsea through Aug 15th).
