The first outdoor sculpture show at the Bundy Modern in over four decades, “At Sixes and Sevens,” features ten New England artists working in sculpture in the broadest sense, and was organized by four of the participating artists: Gregory Gómez, Daniela Rivera, David Snyder, and E Tubergen. Here, they take free rein of this rural contemporary art center built by architect Harlow Carpenter in 1962, installing not only in its glass-faced gallery but throughout the grounds. Carpenter was a strong proponent of modernist architecture, having studied at Harvard Graduate School of Design under the influence of Josep Lluís Sert, Marcel Breuer, and Walter Gropius. While the show’s press release claims that the artworks on view reckon with the “political instrumentalization” of modernism’s “false promises” (admittedly a tall order), many address modernism as both art historical movement and cultural condition rather obliquely. Thus, the show is appropriately titled “At Sixes and Sevens” (a phrase I had to Google), which expresses a state of confusion or misalignment.
The site’s unusual history feels crucial to understanding some of the works on view. A sculptor and architect, Carpenter was also the heir to the fortune that became IBM. Better known as a financier and founder of Sugarbush ski area and golf course, Carpenter was instrumental to the construction of the Carpenter Center for Visual Arts at Harvard, which was funded by his father and designed by Le Corbusier. Under Carpenter, the Bundy Art Gallery, as it was originally called, had an ambitious program, featuring the work of over fifty artists at a time, hosting music concerts, and offering free art camps for children. Some now canonical artists of the era presented works there, such as Romare Bearden, Louise Bourgeois, and Louise Nevelson, and a few dozen steel “legacy sculptures” from the ’60s, including two by Carpenter, remain scattered throughout the landscape. After subsequent repurposing as a primary school and occasional private event venue, June and Wendell Anderson, the current owner-residents, bought the property in 2014 and restarted its art program.
Most clearly in dialogue with the legacy of modernist architecture is Katarina Burin’s group of hybrid bench-planters. Set in proximity to the main driveway, three rectilinear white concrete sculptures sprout from the lawn, like a miniature mock-up of a utopian mid-century housing project. Folly (2026) playfully parodies an over-adherence to the mantra of functionalism. While the sculptures’ material and geometry resemble architecture, their size, L-shape suggesting seat and back, and vinyl cushions invite viewers to sit. Those who take a seat, as I did, will encounter awkward ergonomics. The close proximity of the trio directs a sitter’s gaze toward details like molding and brass ornament. These compete for attention with the showy blossoms and foliage springing from each planter and the pollinators they attract. There’s a delightful irreverence toward the standards of good design in the way Burin has compressed the entirety of a sculpture park experience into a storage unit footprint. No need to walk the grounds. This whimsical take on modernist efficiency is further emphasized by Burin’s decision to present a scale model of Folly in the gallery.
Daniela Rivera’s suite of works coalesce into a more dispirited take on modernism. Marking the subtle slopes of the outdoor terrain, she planted three green flags emblazoned with the word “Trust” in white font. While the flags vary in material and process—hand-dyed cotton, rendered with reflective lettering, and stuffed with crinkle fill—they all hang limp, a metaphor for our social bonds. Each occupies a distinct elevation and exposure, providing conditions for unavoidable deterioration by the elements. The proximity of works dating from the Bundy Modern’s vibrant early years, some in need of conservation, reinforces the inevitability of decline. Inside, Rivera’s slogan recurs in two works that bookend the gallery installation. A detachable sign produced using fresco mural technique greets viewers in the foyer, ironically hung against the building’s exposed brick wall. In a recess before a stairway to the building’s private spaces, a “Trust” sign appears again, in a layered photographic image. A woman holds the sign in front of her face, making her anonymous; she is seen in two locations—ascending the staircase of a building by modern architect Paul Rudolph and doubly obscured behind the metal screen of a freight elevator. This specific reference does not offer a critique of modernism as much as it expresses the ubiquity of its presence.
Oscar René Cornejo’s materials and reduction of form suggest the influence of East Asian aesthetics and the centrality of wide views and play of light on modern art. Only by walking away from the house toward the tree-lined outskirts of the close-mowed lawn does the gate-sized Thresholds of Shadow and Light (2026) come into view. A wood beam set atop two structural pillars evokes a Japanese torii gate, while its thin, colored glass inserts echo the International Style’s use of large windows to frame views of the surrounding landscape. Indoors, Cornejo shows Suspended Horizon (2026)—a rectangle of pale-blue habotai silk hanging from a suspended wood beam that mirrors his outdoor work. Similar in size to its mate, this almost-painting catches the natural light entering the gallery, using transparency to reveal subtle gradations of light while framing views behind it. These more glancing references to the loaded term “modernism” recur throughout the show.
The site’s landscaping features, such as an ornamental rock and man-made reflecting pool, become points of departure and methods of orientation. Anina Major’s lusciously glazed, brilliantly textured ceramics fly in the face of the tenet “form follows function.” Made by weaving strips of clay while leather-hard, Major’s Tide Rock (2026) draws on basketry techniques as well as hand-building methods used to make clay vessels. Perched pondside on a boulder pedestal, it neither catches nor holds water, unabashedly asserting itself as an object of aesthetic contemplation. Sparse by contrast, Paloma Izquierdo domesticates the pond by displaying a sample of its water inside a glass cylinder inside the gallery. Hung at an angle parallel to the stairway behind it, Railing (Pond) (2024) emulates the titular architectural feature. Where the modern architect used glass walls to orient a viewer’s gaze toward a panoramic view of the pond landscape outside, Izquierdo focuses the attention on glass as a material that can frame or distort vision. Here, the artist re-presents the pond vista as a sculptural non-site in the legacy of Robert Smithson, who represented locations in the landscape inside the gallery through raw material elements rather than pictorial means.
Two outdoor works cleverly leverage the site’s relatively flat topography and sparse landscaping, unusual attributes among American sculpture parks, which typically boast dramatic slopes and lush botanicals. Unmarked at a distance and slowly disclosing itself upon approach is Coral Saucedo Lomeli’s Agua Viva (2026). Thirty-five feet in length, this line of ceramic tiles embedded in the earth resembles storm drain grates, popping up through the grass like mushrooms after rain. E Tubergen’s Fugue (2026), an arc-shaped incision in the ground, is lined with boards of hemlock burnished black with pine tar. Part prepper bunker, part war trench, with a dash of play structure, it’s an appropriate non-architecture, not-sculpture for this moment in history. If “At Sixes and Sevens” surveys modernism’s heterogeneous terrain, these hidden pieces indicate high points at the edges of its traditional historical periodization. The works blur the boundaries between sculpture, architecture, and landscape, a tendency of the expanded field of sculpture that emerged in the late 1960s and ’70s. While Rosalind Krauss theorized this shift, no knowledge of her work is necessary to appreciate these pieces. Despite its imposing scale, watching a person pass through Fugue—descending, disappearing, and reemerging—from a distance is as pleasing as traversing the work. A light at the end of the chasm, if you will.
David Snyder’s Belfry (2026) is a posthumanist almost-architecture for animals. Located near the property’s entrance, the four-legged untreated wood structure initially appears a minimalist experiment with vernacular architecture. Belfry’s traditional archways are recast as triangular openings, less inviting to the human figure. Stoop underneath to find, instead of a bell, a low ceiling and small aperture. A peek inside delivers no bell but a dark cavity and the structure’s interior beams, an ideal domicile for bats. (At the time of this writing, none have yet moved in.) A tiny bell resides instead atop the structure’s peak, a faint diacritic, expressing its subtle duality. It’s a home for bats and for a bell. It’s a reminder that architecture for animals and architecture for humans are not mutually exclusive.
The visual and conceptual heterogeneity of the indoor gallery installation reflects the chaotic urgency of the show’s title and echoes the disordered vibes of art-making in 2026. Given the current political precarity and pessimism, it’s unsurprising to find little of the utopian ideology espoused by modernist architects during the Bundy Modern’s mid-century infancy. No overarching narrative reveals itself as the artists address not a monolithic modernism but modernisms. The best works here take advantage of the switch between broad views and intimate observation fostered by the site. If there is a takeaway about modernism to be gleaned from “At Sixes and Sevens,” it’s this multiplicity of perspective. There is still fertile ground for artists in the dialogue between architecture and sculpture, whether they orient themselves inside or outside any “ism” or school of thought.
“At Sixes and Sevens: Sculpture at the Bundy Modern,” is on view through September 25, 2026, at the Bundy Modern, 361 Bundy Road, Waitsfield, VT.
