When Matthew Marks visited Ellsworth Kelly to ask the 88-year-old artist to make a piece for the gallery owner's new space in Los Angeles, Kelly was at first noncommittal. Marks’s second journey to Kelly's upstate New York studio, however, finally proved fruitful. “I walked into his library and found that he had put this black bar across the top quarter of the architectural model,” Marks said. “With this simple gesture, Ellsworth turned the whole building into a work of his.” Kelly’s sculpture for the gallery’s facade references his 1966 work Black Over White, and is in keeping with the artist’s spare modern style.

The building, designed by Peter Zellner, stands on a West Hollywood lot once occupied by an old garage. Though Zellner has been retrofitting industrial spaces for years—his first project was the Project: GalleryLA building in Culver City—the new Matthew Marks Gallery is his first completely original design. Zellner completed the building’s design before seeing Kelly’s sculptural relief, but now cannot envision the gallery without it. “Without the piece, the building seemed kind of naked. The artist finished the building for me,” Zellner says. Influenced by minimalist California buildings like Frank Gehry’s Danziger Studio, Zellner created a “big blank white box” with trough-like skylights to flood the space with natural light. 

Exterior of Matthew Marks Gallery, Los Angeles.

Kelly’s exterior sculpture will remain a permanent fixture on the gallery’s exterior. The gallery’s inaugural show, Ellsworth Kelly: Los Angeles, includes Black Over White, plus a group of 1952-54 collages Kelly made in Paris, and a group of six new two-panel paintings on view at Matthew Marks for the first time. Each panel consists of a shaped canvas with a dramatic curve, painted in a single vivid hue. 

Ellsworth Kelly: Los Angeles is at Matthew Marks Gallery from January 20-April 7.    

Matthew Marks Gallery
Photographer: Joshua White. Courtesy Matthew Marks Gallery.