After beginning her career as a painter, Lynda Benglis began seeking a “more sensuous kind of surface.” Her nine-piece work Adhesive Products (1971)—commissioned for the Walker Art Center’s Edward Larabee Barnes–designed building—is a now-iconic result of that experimentation. Over two weeks, she built armatures of chickenwire and plastic, which were suspended from the gallery walls, then poured liquid polyurethane over them to create cascading sculptures that hover above the ground. “I wanted to build up a form so that the viewer could walk around and experience the flow of the material,” Benglis said, “a bodily extension, as you would experience a stream or a river flow with an oil slick on it.”
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