Leaning upright against the wall, John McCracken’s signature Planks hover between painting and sculpture. To make these works, the artist covered plywood with fiberglass—to avoid any wood grain or joins from showing through—before finishing it with a highly reflective, monochrome lacquer surface inspired by the smooth finish of cars. This painstakingly hand-polished surface allows the sculpture to reflect its environment—a central goal of McCracken’s. In the artist’s words, “Images reflected in the surfaces become part of the sculptures, [which] seem to almost disappear and become illusions, so rather than describing these things as objects, it might be better to describe them as complexes of energies.” This comports with McCracken’s long-held belief in the paranormal, extraterrestrials, and time travel; in his sketchbooks he suggested that his sculptures are “beings of another world transmitting themselves here through me.”

Exhibition label: Light, Space, Surface: Works from the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 2021, Carol S. Eliel.