Diane Simpson: Cardboard-Plus, 1977-1980 exhibits the artist’s large-scale cardboard sculptures and collaged constructions shown together for the first time in 40 years. Created soon after completing her M.F.A. (1978), these works were last exhibited collectively in Simpson’s first two solo exhibitions at Artemisia Gallery, Chicago (1979) and at Phyllis Kind Gallery, New York (1980). Already emblematic of the artist’s mature style these works show Simpson’s transition from her studies in drawing and printmaking into sculpture, the medium that would become the focus of her decades-long career.

Although these works are from early in Simpson’s career, they are consistent with her enduring solutions to the challenges of sculpture. Already you can see her incorporation of a 45-degree rotation in her sculptures, allowing a simultaneous approach to the front and side views of the objects. This is a sculptural translation of a perspectival drawing technique for rendering three dimensions in two. The cardboard surfaces also host drawings, sometimes of textural rubbed crayon and others with intricate graphite lines describing other geometric spaces. Sculpture as drawing supporting drawing. Drawing as sculpture. Drawing supported by objects rendered from drawing.

Another enduring characteristic of Simpson’s early work is her anti-illusionistic use of quotidian materials. There is a directness and sincerity to her sculpture. Cardboard was a pragmatic solution to creating easily-transportable works without a studio space. Resembling a sewing practice, each cut piece is an interlocking planar shape supporting each other to additively compose a volume. Works that at first glance appear almost industrially-produced upon closer reflection reveal slight moments of the presence of the artist’s hand and her idiosyncratic engineering solutions.

Most well-known is Simpson’s later work which contains references to the architecture of clothing and elements of fashion; and has been the subject of recent important solo museum exhibitions at the ICA, Boston (2015), MCA Chicago (2016), and the 2019 Whitney Biennial. In contrast the works in Diane Simpson: Cardboard-Plus, 1977-1980 are much more formal in nature, serving to expand the narrative of Simpson’s career, exhibiting the scale of her ambition and illuminating her path into sculpture.