Glasgow International Festival of Contemporary Art

Finite Structures

Two marble eggs on a white background, each rendered in black and white. Both share the same geometric pattern of two right angles, but the colours are reveresed: one egg is mostly black with white lines, the other mostly white with black lines.
Bettina, Options for an Angle: 24 Inconstants from One Constant, 1970 Courtesy Ulrik, New York Photograph: Stephen Faught

Black-and-white silver gelating photograph of a woman reflected in a glass-fronted building on a New York City street. Her body is split across two panes of glass set at different angles, distorting her figure and obscuring her face and camera.
Bettina, Untitled, 1970s Courtesy Ulrik, New York Photograph: Stephen Faught

Dates and Opening times
Fri 5 Jun, 6pm-8pm

6 - 21 Jun Mon – Sat, 12pm-5pm
Venue

Cento, 20 Albert Road, G42 8DN

Participants
Bettina
Presented by

Cento

Supported by

The Estate of Bettina Grossman and Ulrik, New York. Additionally, supported by Glasgow International with funds from the Scottish Government's Festival EXPO Fund.

Accessiblity
Level Access, Step Free: The venue has ramped or level access and/or lifts to upper floors

Toilets: The venue has toilets available for visitors, but these are not accessible

Gender Neutral Toilets: The venue has toilets not separated by gender or sex

The solo exhibition Finite Structures presents an interconnected set of sculptural, photographic, and animated film works by Bettina Grossman (1927–2021), known as Bettina, a conceptual artist who lived and worked in the Chelsea Hotel from 1972 until her death.

Born in Brooklyn, New York, Bettina travelled between Europe and the United States as a designer during the 1950s and 1960s before settling in New York. Over the subsequent decades, she developed a prolific practice that rejected the singular art object in favour of a rich body of work encompassing photography, xerography, word art, film, computer-assisted animation, textiles, painting, and sculpture.

Engaging with themes of urban space, surface, rhythm, distortion, surrealism, and bodies in motion, Finite Structures explores the topological and philosophical concerns that underpinned Bettina’s practice during the 1970s. A new publication features a commissioned essay by Dr. Esther Draycott alongside documentation of artworks and materials from the artist’s archive.

Organised closely with the Estate of Bettina and Ulrik, New York, this is the first presentation of the artist’s work in Scotland and in the United Kingdom.