Beverly Pepper: My Circle
At the Ledge

February 8 - 23, 2022

“I think it’s essential that we hold on [to] those threads of continuity. We hold onto the idea that we believe. I’m too old to think the world is going to come to an end... quite clearly my life will come to an end; but I like to think that the world will then go on. And I think the world will also go on with or without man, you see. But continuity has always been almost the raison d’être.”⁣
Beverly Pepper⁣
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We are honored to have exhibited Beverly Pepper's monumental work 𝘔𝘺 𝘊𝘪𝘳𝘤𝘭𝘦 (2008-2018) at the Ledge, and to have placed My Circle with an important US private collection.⁣
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Pepper considered My Circle one of her best and most important sculptures. It speaks directly to one of the main through lines in her entire body of work: bringing the past into conversation with the present and the future. Pepper once explained: “I live in the present but draw from the past, both within the back of the mind and within the substrates of history. Counting on a future is too problematic. I think that my works end up ‘knowing’ more than I can about the future — and clearly I’m interested in materials that endure, that might have something to say to those who come after us.”⁣
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Pepper noted that My Circle relates to the Zen Buddhist symbol enso, which can be drawn as either an open or closed circle. Sometimes called the Circle of Enlightenment, the Infinity Circle, or the Mutual Circle, enso can symbolize beginnings and endings, the circle of life, and the “connectedness of existence,” which Pepper found particularly meaningful to the work.⁣